Journal with Me: Caitlyn’s 2023 Reading Journal

Happy happy New Year, dear readers! I’m so excited to be sharing some of my favorite spreads from my 2023 reading journal with you all!

In 2022 I set up a traveler sized reading journal, and though it was nice, I didn’t end up using it as much as I had wanted to. I thought that the traveler size would make me feel less pressured to create large and detailed spreads, and while it did achieve that, I actually felt that the size was really restrictive to my creative process and I ended up only using two spreads consistently.

For 2023, I really want to utilize this journal not only for tracking my reads, goals and challenges, but also for creative spreads for books that resonated with me throughout the year. This time around I decided to go with an 8×8 journal, and I’m feeling much more creatively inspired!

So, grab a cup of tea, get cozy and let’s take a look at some of my spreads for my 2023 reading journal!

*Note that I am not affiliated with any brands that are mentioned in this post. 

My current favorite pastime is watching journaling videos on YouTube, and I pulled so much inspiration from those videos! Seeing so many different methods and styles inspired me to try new things and I’m really loving how this journal has turned out. I decided to go with this stunning 8×8 Archer and Olive journal that was part of their Fall collection. Once I saw it I just knew that it had to be my reading journal for 2023. The new size has also stopped me from falling back on the same old spreads that I use in my regular bullet journal, which has definitely helped me avoid a creative rut.

Okay, let’s get started and take a look at my journal! 

I don’t typically do a cover page in my journals, but all the videos I’ve been watching lately have inspired me to try more scrapbook style journaling — I used to scrapbook all the time and absolutely loved it — so, I figured, let’s do a cover page! I did this late one night after I woke up from an unintentional nap and needed something to do since I was feeling energized. I used images that I already had printed from previous bullet journal layouts, so I didn’t really have any set plan going into this.

You’ll see throughout the journal that I’m using different shades of purple as the main color theme — which I’m sure no one is surprised about because I literally never shut up about purple being my favorite color —- and I just pulled some purple images and die-cuts that I had.

Next we go into the reading goals page. I did this at a different time from the cover page, but I did the same thing and pulled images from things that I already had printed. I really love this line art drawing that I found on Pinterest a long time ago, and knew that I wanted to use it. Amy March’s “I want to be great or nothing” quote is one that I have always loved, and I definitely came up with some intense reading goals, so I need a little Amy March inspiration! I designed the “twenty twenty three reading goals” banner in Photoshop since I did not trust myself to write this in a way that I wouldn’t hate, and I think it adds to the scrapbook style that I wanted to play around with.

When I saw Plant Based Bride’s book bingo spread (starts at 6:29) I just knew that I wanted to list my reading goals for 2023 that way. I LOVE bingo spreads, and I think of this page as an homage to my grandma. She always tells me about her days playing bingo when we talk on the phone, so I think that’s part of why this layout really spoke to me.

The only downside was that it meant that I had to come up with 24 goals for 2023. A huge thank you to Cossette and Mary for not only listening to me rant about trying to come up with 24 goals, but for also helping me come up with them! They helped remind me that not all of my goals have to be big things. So, if you’re currently struggling with creating reading goals for this year, I highly recommend picking some goals that you know you’re going to accomplish easily! My goals for 2023 are:

• Read 275 books
• Annotate all of Shakespeare’s plays
• Remain at/above 80% on NetGalley each month
• Read at least 1 non-Shakespeare play a month
• Read at least 1 non-fiction a month
• Annotate at least 2 books a month
• 80/20% ratio of LGBTQ+/BIPOC authors to white authors
• Read more books set outside of the US/Europe
• Read more translated works (at least 5)
• Annotate Les Misérables
• Stay on top of my reading journal
• Unhaul physical books every 3 months
• Read at least 1 book from my physical TBR each month
• Read all book club picks
• Read all ARCs within 1 week of receiving them (regardless of publication date)
• Finish my Nancy Drew reread
• Read 23 backlist books in 2023
• Don’t be afraid to read books that others have already reviewed on the blog
• Annotate 5 plays/musical scripts
• Theatre reading challenge with Cossette
• Read more books in a non-traditional format
• The Rory Gilmore book challenge
• Read a book recommended by a celebrity
• Finish a series or an author’s collected works

Some of these goals I know I’ll accomplish easily and some (like the Rory Gilmore book challenge and annotating Les Mis) will take me more time and I may not even get through them in the year, but I like having some lofty goals. If you have any recommendations that would fit some of these prompts, especially books outside of the US/Europe and translated works, please share them!

I love using and designing trackers, so I’ve got quite a few in this journal! First, I like to have a tracker that is for counting how many books I’ve read throughout the year. For me, the easiest way to track this is to have little numbered boxes. Once I’ve read that number book, I’ll fill it in with one of the purple markers that I’m using in this journal — the colors are shown in my next tracker. I like to keep this spread really simple, the only decoration is the banner at the top. I had this image on my computer already and just added the title in Photoshop in the same font and color that I used on my goals page. I left some space for more boxes as I typically go over my reading goal throughout the year and want to have space to track those books as well.

Another tracker that I love is my days read tracker, which I just labeled as a ‘reading tracker’ because I couldn’t think of anything else to call it. I’ve gone very simple for this one and just did a simple year in pixels spread. Last year, I tracked the amount of pages read in a day which worked really well if I was reading a book physically or in ebook format, but was a lot harder if I was reading via audiobook. This year, I decided to track the format in which I read, so you’ll see that I have a color for physical books, ebooks, audiobooks, a combination of any of the three, and I’ll draw in a black dot if I finish a book that day. Super easy and simple, which works perfectly for some quick logging at the end of the day. 

One of my favorite trackers is my bookshelf. This is where I’ll track the names of all the books that I read, as well as if it’s a new read, a reread, or one of my favorite books. Technically, favorite books could fall under the rereads category, but just because I reread a book doesn’t necessarily mean it’s one of my favorites, so I like to have that distinction. 

Yes, I did draw 275 books, and it took forever. I wanted to try something new in this spread, so I created a dutch door — the first one that I have ever done — and I’m so happy with how it turned out! You’ll see that I also have space for more books/shelves if needed, so even if I read another 25 books and hit a total of 300 books read next year, it would all be able to fit on the same page. This is one of my favorite spreads, and I always include it in my journal.

The genre tracker is something new for me, and I’m kind of in love with it. I saw this tracker from Jessie_Journals and was instantly obsessed — I knew I wanted to recreate it in a way, but didn’t know how because I had already created my books read tracker, but then it hit me. A genre tracker! I have never done a genre tracker before, but for 2023 I want to challenge myself to try new things in all of my journals, so I figured, why not! I also included some of my favorite washi tape from The Washi Tape Shop. This washi is part of the Floral Essence set and I use it all the time. 

It definitely took a while to draw all the boxes, but it was actually kind of soothing so I didn’t mind. My favorite part of the spread though is the page on the right that has my color code. When deciding on which genres I would track, I went with genres that I read the most and have separated them by adult and young adult — I also included classics, plays, musical scripts, and middle grade as those are also genres that I read a lot of. I want to read more non-fiction in 2023, so I’m also including trackers for poetry, biography/memoirs, historical, and true crime, as those are subcategories of non-fiction that I already enjoy and know I’ll read at least some books that fall into those categories next year.

The hardest part of setting up this spread was deciding how I was going to list the genre key and then choosing the colors (honestly, it took me over an hour of the If We Were Villains audiobook on 2x speed and 9 different color combinations to find something I liked), but it all worked out in the end. I have this stencil set from Notebook Therapy that I use for everything, and the file folder stencil was really speaking to me. I decided to go with a color spectrum and use more rich colors as opposed to pastels or really bright vibrant colors that I typically lean towards. Some of the colors like the Barley Blue Archer and Olive Calliograph or the 620 lilac Tombow are a bit lighter, but they still work within the color scheme really well — and I use the lilac Tombow throughout the entire journal, so I like having that throughline!

You’ll see that I also created a tip in — my new favorite thing! — to use as a color key because, well, I know me and I know that I won’t remember which marker is for which color, especially when it comes to the Crayola SuperTips or the colors that I don’t use as often. I love how the tip in turned out and it’ll just make things so much easier for me while I’m filling in the tracker. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Caitlyn, what are you going to do if you read a book that falls under multiple genres listed, or one that hasn’t been listed in your tracker” if a book falls under multiple genres, then I’ll just use both colors to fill in the box. Truthfully, I don’t see myself reading many genres outside of what I listed here, but if I do, I’ll just add more colors as I have space on the page to fit another 8 file folders, but we’ll see!

The last set up of my 2023 reading journal that I’m going to share with you is my Les Misérables Annotation Tracker! As mentioned in the goals section, this year I plan on annotating Les Misérables — a task I have attempted before, and abandoned. As this book is over 12,000 pages, it’s definitely no easy feat. 

This spread was directly inspired by c’est mackenzie’s 2021 reading journal set up, where she had her own Les Mis reading challenge. I loved the idea of using a calendar to track days read, especially since we know how much I love filling in boxes, and thought that would be a great way to help keep me motivated. 

Since Les Mis is split up into five books, on the left page I thought it would be fun to draw a stack of books representing the five parts of Les Mis, and then once I’ve finished that section of the book I’ll color it in to show that I’ve finished it. I also set up a tip in to give me some space to write down quotes that I love or any other notes that I may want to keep in my physical journal as well as the annotated copy.

And there we have it, some of the spreads in my 2023 reading journal! As I mentioned earlier, I have many other spreads in this journal that I’m really proud of, including anticipated releases, trackers for the Rory Gilmore and PopSugar reading challenges, and many more! I’ll be sharing more on my Instagram @readbycait and I’ll do a follow up post come mid-year!

Are you using a reading journal in 2023? What are some spreads that are absolutely necessary for you to have?