Book Journals

I own three different book journals. I have looked at and almost bought many more. I love the concept of a book journal. It’s different sections allow me to stay organized with an area for me to think about what I read and journal/review, an area for me to keep a list of the books I want to read, and those I’ve lent/borrowed. They are fantastically useful-if you find the right one.
I own: 501 Must Read Books Book Journal, book notes Journal, and Read, Remember, Recommend: A Reading Journal for Book Lovers.

501 is great because it is small & portable and has the 3 parts to the book. First,half the book is for reviews. It starts with the star rating system, title & author, date you read and then leaves lots of lines for you to fill in. The flaw is that its small so I end up using an extra “review” almost every time, but because there are so many pages it doesn’t seem to fill quickly. The second half of the book is actually broken into 3 small parts: books lent, borrowed and reading wishlist. What I like about this one is that the layout is a simple list style with one line to list the book, who you lent it to, the date and a check box for whether or not it was returned. The books borrowed section is the same. As a result they have 20 spots per page and over 10 pages a section-lots of room! Even the Reading Wishlist area is efficient. Title, author, who recommended it, and a check box for once it has been read. Done.

The third part of the book journal is how it gets its name. It is an 8 page list of 501 must read books, alphabetical. With check boxes for if you’ve read them. I would be curious to know how they came up with the list. It ranges from young adult books like Harry Potter and Alice in Wonderland to books like Three Men in a Boat, and other obscure classics, and of course the ones you would expect to find. As this journal is a couple of years old I would say you won’t find anything newer than 5 or 6 years old in the list. The only problem I have with the list is that it is a simple check list. Check box if you have read. No where to indicate ones that you may want to read-because few of us will read all 501. But that is easily fixed by keeping a small travel highlighter in the back pocket of the book and highlighting the ones I want to read.

Other great features to this book include a built in book marker so that you can mark your last review, the mentioned pocket in the back and an elastic to keep everything pressed tightly together. Another great feature-there is cover art for some of the 501 books throughout, as well as “did you know” facts throughout the review section- like, did you know: “Children’s and Household Tales, published by the brothers Grimm in the early 19th century, were collected in the French and German countryside as part of their research into linguistics. These old folk tales include Cinderella, Snow White, Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel.” …and now you know.

The flaws of the book are minimal-lines for titles are not long enough, lines for “recommended by” are too long. Review space isn’t long enough either. And there are no tabs for the different sections or indicator so with the exception of that one book mark you are flipping the pages till you find the right place. But the size is right and it is simply laid out.

book notes journal was a gift from my husband. One that I wanted badly. I thought it would be fantastic- it has a section tabs for Recommended Reads, Reading Notes, Favorite Quotes, and Books Borrowed and Lent. Each of the tabs are stiff pockets so if you run out of room you can tuck your pages in it. This is what sold me, as I always run out of room in a book journal in less than a year. It also has the elastic closure so that nothing falls out and other cute features like book quotes through and a highly useful section for listing resources.

The Recommended section is great-3 straight forward lines for books recommended to you-Title, Author, Recommended by. The Books Borrowed/Lent is a straight forward grid: Title, To, From, Date. This set up is the best I have seen because most give you an event amount of space for loaning and borrowing. But here there is no limitation to one category. With this type of layout Now I just have to put my name in the From or To in order to indicate whether I lent it or borrowed it.

Despite these great features I have discovered the more I used this book journal the less I like it. Why? Well, let us start with the publishing quality. When I found this book on the book shelf most of the tab pages were in upside down. So when hubby bought me one I warned him and he looked for one whose tabs weren’t upside down-but alas instead of upside down tabs I have some upside down review pages. Not such a huge deal since a line is a line, but it looks unprofessional and frustrates me every time I come across another.

Second, in the review section they alternate giving you one page for two reviews and the next page is for one review. At first, this seemed wise to me. If I knew I had a lot to think about or review I just turned to a full page review, and when I didn’t I used a short one. Now the problem is that all of the long ones are filled. So, why not do what I’ve done before and when you finish a short one then continue the next page? Because the next page is a long review and therefore full. So I am skipping a couple of pages in order to get to the second half of the review. Its now a semi-disorganized mess.

Also, when I looked and wanted this book I loved that the review section appeared to be about 1/3 of the book. Alas, I discovered 3 months into owning the book that halfway through the reading notes section is actually another section-so did they forget a tab? It wouldn’t surprise me since they can’t manage to put the pages in right side up or the tabs in other editions. This hidden section is called Books Read and is just simply a place to list all of the books you read. Which actually is not a bad feature-I don’t analyze or review every book I read, otherwise I wouldn’t do anything else. But nonetheless it means that my actual space for reviewing was half that I expected and is more or less full long before the rest of the book.

The quotes page was a unique feature to this book and a great place for me to write down page references or passages that were my “ah ha!” moments. But at 14 pages I have begun using it as extra review space because I simply don’t need that kind of room.

All in all its not a bad book, but it wasn’t a cheap one either. It is my only hardcover version, and is very pretty. It is also quite large-7X5 most likely. But for the 30.00 price tag attached to it I would not recommend it, when the 501 Must Read is more conveniently stored/carried, has all the basics, and was a whole 5 or 6 dollars. But at the same time, I love the books lent/borrowed section and use it exclusively among my other journals.

Lastly we come upon my newest book journal-I just got it last week. Read, Remember, Recommends. I follow the blog called Book Club Classics, which I have mentioned before. And she raved about this book as well as the teen version. Amazon even allows you to look inside. I did, I liked what I saw. At first I bought a copy for the library-specifically for the book club so I can keep track of the books they’ve read, are reading and like.

There are some great features to it. First, tabbed sections include an Awards & Notables List, To Read, Journal Pages, Recommendations, Loaner Lists and Resources. The selling feature is without a doubt the huge section that lists all the major award winners nationally and internationally-including Canada-and lists of recommended books by notable papers and blogs. This section even allows room to make your own list and rom to add award winners as announced over upcoming years. This section is about 150 pages long!

The award section is composted of a grid where The award title appears at the top followed by a listing of the year, the title, the author, symbols representing other awards it has won, a column to check if you own the book, one for Recommend, one for To Read, and one for want. It even has a little “how to” at the beginning that explains the different awards and how to use the boxes. It suggests that if you would like to read the book you should simply put an / in the To Read column, and once you’ve read it, finish it off to make an X. Kind of ingenious and simple all at the same time.

After having seen the awards section I showed Read, Remember, Recommends to my book club and suddenly had to order 10 copies-including one for me! Plus I ordered a copy of the teens version for the library and a couple as door prizes in the upcoming year for the library too.

The To Read section of the book contains the same boxes with more room for title, author and one line for notes. What is different from this book to the ones I have already reviewed is that the To Read section is more where books recommended to me go and the Recommendation section is where books I would like to recommend go. I find this a little strange and useless, likely because I don’t keep track of books I would recommend to others. If I liked the book I will likely recommend it to someone, depending on their reading style.

In the To Read section, it also contains the same boxes as the awards section. So once I’ve actually read the book I can check off whether or not I would recommend it, adding another reason that the Recommended section is useless.

Ahh the Journal Pages. I have a love/hate relationship with the journal pages. It is like they took the journal pages of book notes and its secret section for listing all of the books you’ve read and combined them into one. Each page is split into a main column and a thin narrow one. There are plenty of lines on each page. The instructions direct you to always record the author & title but then it is up to you. You can either use the lines for journaling about the book you’ve read and use the thin column to record page references. Or you can just simply record the titles and the date you read them.

The problem is that there is no specific start/end place for an entry because of the multi use ability. And every line is bold so you can event bold at the end of a review to start the next place. It becomes hard to tell the difference from one to the next and the use of a small travel highlighter again becomes necessary. But I have decided to use the pages as a list of the books I’ve read. This book has become more of an organizer for me than a book journal. The awards section is the best I’ve ever seen, the resources section at the end is a mountain of information, the To Read section is one of the best I’ve seen as well. This book falls short in the review area and also, the loan/borrow section is the same as most others so I don’t like it after owning book notes.

In terms of a book lover’s list organizer and resources keeper this book wins hands down and is my new favorite. But as an actual journal it fails. I love their check box system. But the bizarre journal pages leave me grumpy. On a PS note, this book is also larger and thick- you’d have to have a luggage sized purse in order for it to be “hidden” away.

So I guess it depends on what you are looking for in a book journal. But for me, I want all three of these. I love the portability of 501, I love the loaner list portion of book notes, and I love most of the things about RRR (though it is essentially missing a journaling section).

I hope this helps anyone out there looking for a journal, and if any book publishers out there have a new one they would like me to look at-you now know what I want in a book journal! I challenge you to give it to me for a review! I love to use book journals, even if there isn’t a perfect one out there.