June 2025 Wrap Up

After a very slow May, I’m glad that June showed a lot more promise, with four books completed, and four others on the go. I did have to pause ‘No Country for Old Men’ as I was just not in the right frame of mind to continue with that one. It is VERY dark. I’m undecided if I’ll continue to read it in the future or if I’ll just mark it as DNF and clear it from my TBR pile, we’ll see. Some fantastic reads this month, and some not-so-great, but at least I finished them. I did also have ‘The Dose Effect’ as my BBBC read, and I am pretty sure that one is going to be added to the DNF pile because I am simply not interested. I mentioned last month that I need to look for another book club, that still rings true.

Happy reading!

Still Here – Still Reading

Despite the fact that I rarely ever make it to actually posting on this damn book blog of mine – I have been reading this year. A LOT in fact. I’ve even been keeping up with my reading journal for once (gasp). Which is what the picture above is from. It’s two spreads that I’ve included, one that shows new releases for 2025 that I’m looking forward to, and the other spread (well, now it’s outdated, but I’ll get to that in a moment) talks about all of the books that I’ve purchased.

BookOutlet.ca also just happened to have a $7.99 sale and it coincided with the removal of taxes (temporarily) on some items. Some items being books. So I purchased 7 brand new books for $50 total, including free shipping. I was incredibly happy when they showed up. Which books? I’ll have to talk about that in a future post.

In the meantime, enjoy the pictures of my reading journal spreads.

Another Day – Another Reading Journal Spread

There are a LOT of different ideas on reading journal spreads out there. When I want to relax, sometimes I just watch videos on YouTube that talk all about them. I wasn’t really happy with a few of the spreads I had put in my reading journal, but I also didn’t want to just start over in a new journal so I took a big piece of sticker paper, and started fresh. That’s where both of these spreads come into play.

On the left hand side is my reading Matrix. At the end of the year I’ll take the top 10 books (with the highest ratings) and then pit them against one another to figure out my #1 book of the year. So far I’ve only read a single book with a 5 star rating, we’ll see if that changes. I didn’t want to do monthly ‘favourites’ because what I read varies so much depending on my moods. It didn’t really seem fair, and wouldn’t be an accurate representation of my favourites.

On the right hand page is my alphabet reading challenge. That one is pretty self explanatory, I write down the titles of the books I read for each letter of the alphabet. I do have a few simple rules, like “they, all, them” do not count as words for this challenge. It’s just a silly little game, but I think it’s a lot of fun. While I don’t think I’ll actively go out and look for books that begin with those letters to try to complete it or anything, I do think it will be fun to see where it naturally leads.

Reading Journal Spreads

The next spread in my reading journal includes my BBBC (bulletjournal buddies book club) books which are selected monthly, and my series tracker. I didn’t like how I initially set my tracker up, and eventually realized I NEED the titles in there, so I re-did it and I added a tip-in, since I ran out of room! Of course I had to add my favourite stickers, chickens!

Reading Journal – BINGO

I decided that 2025 would be the year I started my very first reading journal – and I’m so glad I did! I don’t have all of it planned out yet, but I do have quite a bit of it done, and I am looking forward to sharing it with everyone. I already wrote about the TBR page along with my star rating system, and this is the BINGO card I’ve added to the center of the book. I’ve already read two books this month so I’ve marked off two of the squares (Book w/a country you’ve never been & Listen to an audiobook) and I can’t wait to see how long it takes me to complete a line in this bingo game. I’ve got more pages I’ve set up and I’ll be posting those later in the week, so stay tuned!

Setting Up a Reading Journal

I love making lists and tracking all of the things. For the past few years I’ve done this in a bulletjournal, combining all of my ‘stuff’ into a single book – however – for 2025 I’ve decided to go ahead and make a dedicated reading journal, just for books (well, sort of, it’s for books, tv shows, movies, and tracking things that I enjoy like knitting).

I figured I’d post a few pages here on the book blog to showcase how I’ve got it set up this year. I’m taking a lot of inspiration from other reading journals out there, and just customizing it a bit to suit my own needs / designs. In the picture above, is my TBR pile (to be read) for the year, along with my rating system. Whether or not I actually make it through all of these books will be another story. I plan on crossing them off as I read them (if I read them), and then of course further on in the book I’ll have the actual reviews written.

Since I’ve joined a book club, it will also give me space to track challenges and events with that. I’m excited! It’s nice to have it all in one place, physically, besides just keeping it around on GoodReads (which I have been trying to move away from a bit).

Do you keep a reading journal? Let me know in comments!