The idea of a book journal was exciting to me and I can actually tackle two new hobbies at the same time. The only thing tripping me up was what pages would work for a nonfiction book journal?
Surely, I can find all kinds of examples on YouTube. I went to find them.
There were many, many videos with titles like Setting up my 2024 Book Journal or something similar. I also had other years to work with. I had my pen at hand, ready to make notes on the pages I needed.
And what I got from these vloggers was videos on how they're decorating their pages. About why they chose the aesthetic they're using. About how they like to use double sided tape or glue sticks or what kind of markers they like to use. Now and then, they'd mention the page they were working on, but they were things like Book Battle, where the book they liked best each month throughout the year competed to win their book of the year. Or a spread for how many books they planned to read in a year.
Pages I'd seen a hundred times, but nothing new or different or exciting.
Okay, maybe if I watched the year-end flip throughs of their book journals, I'll get some ideas on the pages I want to create.
This is where the vloggers talked about the books they read for the year and if they met their goals, the reading challenges they participated in, their To Be Read piles. But nothing that helped me with the setup of my own book journal.
Maybe the book community who journals already knows what pages they want and no one else needs this information?
Or maybe my needs are just so drastically different that it's not a good fit?
I'm not going to do a yearly journal. I plan to use the same journal until I fill it up. This means I don't need monthly spreads. I also don't want a yearly goal or to do any reading challenges. I know me and setting goals on this front will only lead to me avoiding reading these books because I'm weird like that.
I did find flip throughs of two incredible book journals (Video One and Video Two) and I've decided to stay as close to these two examples as possible with my own journal. I know what I do will never look as awesome because I just don't have that level of patience or artistic ability, but I like the general layouts and it's something to aspire toward. Now it's a matter of figuring out what I want in there besides the books.
