Reading Journals

As someone who enjoys reading, and enjoys reading to my children, I cannot believe it has never dawned on me (till now) to be keeping a record of the books we read. As I was driving home from visiting Chicago this weekend, I was thinking about how it would be nice to keep track of the books I have read. I started thinking about what a nice keepsake that might be for my kids and grandkids to have someday (I know I would love to see a journal of what my grandma was reading when she was my age). And then I started thinking about all the books I read with my kids, and all the fun we have talking about these stories and reading them over and over. And I wondered why I haven't been keeping track of all that! I am sad about all the reading memories I have let slip away from us, but I'm excited to go ahead and get going with our reading journaling NOW. Better late than never!

I found lots of suggestions online for what kinds of things you can reflect on and write about in your reading journal, but I plan to keep mine pretty simple. I would like to remember when I read the book, why I read the book, where I read the book (on a plane, vacation, at soccer practice), and then just some general reactions to the book. I would mostly like to use this journal as a way to help record my life. If it evolves into something more than that, fine, but I'm not going to put a lot of pressure on myself to be composing in-depth book reports on every book I read.

As far as journaling what my kids are reading, I plan to keep that simple too. I will follow the same basic guidelines as what I laid out above, but will include what my kids' reactions were, and any activities we may have done following and/or related to the book. I also might include what kinds of curiosity it sparked and what other books it may have led to us reading.

My children can't do much writing yet, so they can't contribute much to the journals yet in that regard, but I might try to have them add some drawings here and there.

I will probably keep it simple with some cheap, basic notebooks, unless I come up with some uber creative idea, or find a reading journal I just can't resist purchasing. You'll see I included a couple photos in this post of some cute ones I found online. You can purchase those HERE and HERE.

Ever kept a reading journal for yourself or your kids? Any tips or ideas to share? Chime in down in the comments! I'm all ears!