Corri’s Guide to Keeping a Book Journal For me, it all started when Borders opened a new store in a town that’s about 40 miles north of where I live. It was back when I was a junior in high school, in the days before the town I live in had anything larger than the little B. Dalton’s in the mall. These days, we have a Borders, and I can be found there regularly, sipping chai and buying ‘just one more book.’ But I digress. My mother and I, being ardent bibliophiles, treated the opening of this new Borders in a nearby town as something of a holy event, and made a pilgrimage to see it. While I was browsing, I came across a journal with ‘Reader’s Journal’ written on the front cover. Inside, there were specially labeled pages to write down what books you’d loaned to whom, books you’re thinking about reading someday, and, most importantly, an entire section dedicated to thoughts about books you’ve read, with neat little spaces for title, author, and date completed. Hey, that’s a great idea, I thought to myself, and turned it over to look at the price. Twenty-two dollars? Are you kidding me? I could buy my own blank book for much less and do the same thing! And so I did. At a nearby Barnes and Noble, I found a lovely little journal with a painting of beautifully bound shelves of books as a cover picture. I snapped it up, and the rest is book journal history. The first book I finished after I got my journal was David Eddings’ Polgara the Sorceress. I opened my new ‘book of books,’ as I had already started to call it, to the first new page, and wrote the title, author, and date: January 4, 1998, exactly five years ago to the day that I write this. It gives me immense pleasure and no small amount of satisfaction to look back at my past entries, and to marvel at the fact that I have actually read all of those books. I never have been able to make myself keep a real journal or any sort of diary on a regular basis, but my book journal has been dutifully used and recorded in since the day I bought it. I have since filled my first book journal, and had to go on a hunt for a new one. This time, I chose a simple book with a brown textured cover and a gold foil design twining its way around the front. In the interest of helping those who are perhaps new to book journaling, I have compiled a list of suggestions and observations. 1. Pick a journal you like. Depending on the length of each entry (I usually try to keep mine to under a page, but that’s just a personal preference), your book journal is likely to be with you for quite some time. I consider myself a fast reader, and it took me four and a half years to fill all of the pages of my first journal. So, make sure that you choose a journal or blank book that you won’t mind looking at for a good long while – something that reflects your personality, your interests, your love for books, perhaps? 2. Choose your pen wisely. I suppose one could have a book journal they kept on the computer, but to me, actually sitting down with a pen and a blank page is much more special. Also, pens and journals are much more mobile than a computer. That being said, choose your pen wisely. Make sure you like how it looks with your handwriting, make sure the ink color is appropriate to your style and mood. As for me, I can’t stand anything but black. Blue ink makes my handwriting look like a third grader’s, and any other color makes it look just plain silly. I’m not a fan of ballpoint pens for the same reason. What I really like are rollerball pens with ink that’s a little runnier because it makes my writing look all old fashioned. I always make sure I’ve got two or three of them lying around, just in case one runs out. However, in keeping with the “be flexible” rule, if you find yourself having just finished a book without your favorite pen on hand, anything will do in a pinch. I once had to go into a museum gift shop to get a pen to record my thoughts about the museum in my diary. It was wretched blue ink, too. 3. Take your book journal with you everywhere. Well, maybe not everywhere. I don’t recommend sewing a pocket into your clothes just to carry your book journal around, but I do usually try to make sure that if I’m in a place where I’m likely to finish the book I’ve got with me, that my book journal and a pen are both somewhere close at hand. This is the reason I carry a miniature backpack instead of a purse. I can fit a novel, my book journal, a bunch of pens, a notebook for writing down ideas and books I want to read, and whatever else I happen to need (wallet, car keys… all that unimportant non-bookish stuff) all in the same place, without getting odd looks. To me, it’s important to record my thoughts about a book as soon after finishing it as possible. In fact, the usual process for me is to read the last word, have my journal already ready, pick up a pen, and start writing. For me, to wait is to lose the sense of the book as a whole that I have directly after finishing. My book journal has traveled with me to Europe, been written in while I was sitting in trains, cars, airports, hotel rooms, and survived many other situations. I can even point to the entry that I made while lying in a cramped little bunk on a train going to Prague when I finished reading The Memoirs of Cleopatra with only a flashlight to see by. 4. Remember to record the date. One of the things I like to do with my journal is flip back and see what I was reading at the same time last year, the year before that, etc. In fact, I wish I’d started book journaling back in junior high, or even earlier. You can see how long it took you to read certain books, and remember how another volume was so exciting you couldn’t put it down and finished it all in one day. Also, recording the date lets you see patterns in your reading habits, and helps you to remember what was going on in your life when you read a certain book. For instance, every summer, the pages of my journal go by like magic. I read at least two books a week. Then, around August, there is a stark, empty gap, and the next entry doesn’t show up until November or December. What does this mean? I started a semester of college, and didn’t have time to read anything that wasn’t for school, that’s what it means! 5. Keep a count. Other than the advantage of being able to pompously say, “I’ve read X number of books in the past year,” there are several nice things about keeping count of how many books you’ve got in your journal. I just can’t think of any right now. Seriously, though, it is nice to have a running total. I usually write a number on the bottom corner of the page every ten books or so. This avoids complications when you’re trying to do a count at the end of your journal, especially if you cover more than one book in an entry. 6. In all things, be flexible. I, for one, like for all of my journal entries to look the same: Title, Author, and Date all on separate lines on the upper lefthand corner of the page. I am almost neurotically obsessive about doing it this way. So, perhaps I need to take my own advice more than give it out when I say, “be flexible.” Sometimes, you’ll forget and do your entry differently. I was so freaked out when I got to the end of Bram Stoker’s Jewell of the Seven Stars that I forgot to write anything except for the title before I started writing my impressions. Don’t feel like you have to write an entry for every single book you read. When I read trilogies, they often get one entry, especially if the books are all shorter. However, if each book of the trilogy is amazing all by itself, each gets its own. To include books for school, or not to include books for school: that is the question. When I started my book journal, I wanted to have a record of every single book I read. However, when I got into college, the prospect of writing an entry for things like Kant’s Foundation of a Metaphysic of Morals, or whatever the heck the man wrote, was positively disgusting. So I didn’t. Now, I only include books I actually enjoyed that I have to read for school. For instance, The Brothers Karamazov got an entry. Portrait of a Lady didn’t. 7. Write for you. A book journal, while it may be a handy reference to have around when people ask you for book recommendations, is primarily for you. When you write, don’t worry that others might find your observations, confusion, or gushy professions of love for a book odd. Write down what made the book memorable for you, what it brought to mind. Be honest with yourself. I have entries where I ramble about fanfiction ideas a certain book has given me, the effect reading a book near a particular holiday has had on me, and other sundry things. At first, I was a bit timid about writing negative comments in my book journal. I was afraid to write that something about a book had annoyed me, or rubbed me the wrong way. When I go back and read older entries, I sound like I’m writing for the “Little Miss Nice-Nice Book Review,” and I often wonder why I didn’t include more of what I really thought. Make your book journal a true expression of yourself and your thoughts on the books you read. 8. Whatever you do, enjoy reading and writing.