How to keep a reading journal (and actually keep it)

A reading journal is a record of what you read and, more importantly, of what reading did to you. A list tells you that you finished a book in March. A journal tells you that you read the last fifty pages on a train with your heart in your throat, and that one line stayed with you for weeks. Months later, the list is trivia. The journal is a memory.

The trouble is that most reading journals die in February. This guide is about a version you can keep up: what to write, when to write it, and how little it takes.

Why bother

• You remember more. Writing two sentences after reading fixes the book in a way that finishing it does not.
• You notice your own taste. After a few months you see what kind of stories move you, and you choose the next book better.
• You keep the feeling, not just the title. The book will always exist. How it felt to read it at that moment of your life will not, unless you write it down.

What to write down

Start with the minimum and add only what you enjoy. For each book:

1. The basics: title, author, when you started and finished. Format if you like (paper, e-book, audio).
2. How it felt: one or two words for the feeling it left. Gripped, comforted, wrecked, restless, in love. This is the part you will be gladdest to have later.
3. The lines that stayed: a quote, a passage, a line of dialogue. Copy it exactly, with the page if you can.
4. One sentence of your own: what you think, now, in your words. Not a review. Nobody is grading it.

Everything else — ratings, genre, pages, the friend who recommended it — is optional. If it starts to feel like homework, drop it.

Ten prompts for when you don't know what to write

1. Where were you when you read the best part?
2. Which character would you call at 2 a.m.?
3. What did the ending actually do to you?
4. Which scene keeps coming back?
5. What did you want to happen that didn't?
6. Who would you give this book to, and why?
7. What were you going through while you read it?
8. Which line would you underline twice?
9. Did it change your mind about anything?
10. Would you reread it? What would you look for the second time?

A routine small enough to keep

• After a reading session (one minute): one line about how it is going, and any quote you marked.
• When you finish a book (five minutes): the feeling, the lines, your sentence.
• Once a month (ten minutes): look back. Which book of the month stayed with you most? It is surprising how quickly the year turns into a story of its own.

The rule that keeps a journal alive: short is fine, skipping is fine, starting again is fine. A journal with gaps is still a journal.

Paper or app?

Paper is lovely, slow and personal, and nothing beats the feeling of an old notebook full of your handwriting. It is harder to search, easy to leave at home, and copying long quotes by hand is work.

An app is always in your pocket, finds any quote in seconds, can import highlights from your e-reader, and turns a year of entries into calendars and stats. The question to ask any app is the one you would never ask a notebook: who else can read this? A reading journal holds things you might not say out loud.

How we do it in Storyfeel

We built Storyfeel for exactly this kind of journal, so here is how the routine above looks in it:

• Feels: save a quote, a highlight or a whole entry, and give it the colour of what it made you feel. Months later the passage is still there, with the colour of the mood you read it in.
• Diary: a page for each day you read, with stickers if you like, and a calendar that fills with covers.
• Imports: bring your Goodreads library (here is how) and your Kindle and Kobo highlights, so you don't start from zero.
• Private by design: the diary is end-to-end encrypted. It syncs across your devices, and nobody else can read it, us included.

It is free for your first 20 books, works in the browser and installs like an app on any device. Start your reading journal, or compare it with other apps first.