Book Journaling

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I’m back in the office now, but I spent most of my time at home during the quarantine hanging out with Mil and journaling. I started myself a book journal, and made spreads for each of the books I’ve read so far this year.

Spread for Erin Morgenstern’s “The Starless Sea”

It was nice to get my thoughts about the books I’ve read so far this year down onto paper. What’s the point of reading a book, if it doesn’t make you think? I mean, it doesn’t always have to be deep thoughts, not all books are meant to challenge us in confrontational ways. But, I like to get something out of my books, and getting those thoughts down on paper is a great way for me to keep them from disappearing.

Sometimes, that just means writing about how the story affected me as I read it. That was mostly the case for Emily St. John’s Station Eleven. It’s an amazing book, but with my anxiety, one I probably shouldn’t have picked up right at the beginning of a pandemic.

The process also made me feel a little more accomplished. I read Ursula K. LeGuin’s Complete Illustrated Books of Earthsea. It’s 5 novels, a book of short stories, and a half a dozen other short stories set in her world of Earthsea. The massive tome comes in at about 1000 pages, so it took me most of the quarantine to read, but I was able to journal about each individual book as I finished it, and that made me feel more accomplished. Especially since Goodreads will only count it as 1 book toward my annual reading goal because of the way they were bound.

Do you journal about your reading? If you do, do you add these pages to your regular journal, or keep a special journal just for books?

4 Comments

  1. anna on June 12, 2020 at 5:06 am

    The only thing I do close to journaling about books is writing reviews on Goodreads. When dealing with omnibus volumes, I usually review each title separately, because a) that’s how I read them and b) I don’t really care about the edition. I seldom bother to make sure that the edition/cover that shows up on the review is the actual one I read. This got me in trouble with two different translations of Erich Kastner’s “Emil and the Detectives”. The most recent translation is dreadful, but GR decided that they knew better than me and conflated the two reviews so that I had to go back and edit them to show which one I meant.

    The state of emergency is to be lifted June 21st. I hope that things will go back to a semblance of normal. As an introvert, 3 months of being forced to stay home and not interact wasn’t as hard as it was for many of my neighbours and friends. I finally got over 15 years plus of serious insomnia! It’s as if someone hit my Reset button. I sleep an average of 8-9 hours a night now. I am unemployed since the lock down in Spain started on 15 March. I hope people will come back in the fall but there’s no guarantee of anything. One of the more amusing things that has happened during quarantine is that my husband is firmly hooked on KDrama! To the place that one series I lost interest in because it got so melodramatic (Soul Mechanic), he kept watching on his own! I prefer comedies myself. We have also started eating a lot of Korean cuisine made at home.

    I’ve been working on my crazy quilt that led me to your blog, and it is really almost finished! When it’s done and bound and washed I’ll send you a picture.

    • Andrea on June 16, 2020 at 9:06 am

      I would love to see a picture of your finished quilt. And I’m super glad that you’re insomnia is gone.

  2. anna on June 13, 2020 at 2:44 am

    I made a comment when this turned up in my Bloglovin’ feed but apparently the system ate it. The only real “journaling” I do about books is when I write reviews on Goodreads. You’re right, writing about it helps me think through what I liked or disliked about a book. Unfortunately the ideas I had in the other comment are all gone. Maybe it will show up some day but I doubt it.

    The crazy quilt that led me to your blog is really almost done! I’ll send you a picture when it’s finished. Even without batting it’s quite heavy.

  3. Carreen Lindebak on June 16, 2020 at 8:28 am

    Hi Andrea. I was supposed to go to Rhonda’s retreat in July but I can’t fly in and go but this is the ONE I wanted to work on so i’m going to try to do it on my own. Thanks for the pattern. I didn’t even know where to start!

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