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How to Track Your Reading
Are you wondering how to track your reading? Read on for my top tips!
There are many reasons you might want to track your reading habits and what books you read.
It can help you reach your reading goals, remember details about the books you’ve read, and reflect on what you read. Tracking my reading helped me start reading more and figure out my reading tastes.
Related: How to Read More: 10 Tips That Help Me Read 70+ Books a Year
1. Use a spreadsheet.
One way to track your reading is to keep a spreadsheet. It can be as simple or as detailed as you want.
Some basic things to include on your reading spreadsheet are the title of the book, author, and dates you read it. You can include other columns for things like genre, page count, your rating of the book, etc.
If you don’t want to create your own spreadsheet, there are various templates available online that you can simply make a copy of and start using! Many of them have some neat features like automatically tallying up your stats and showing them to you in graph form.
Here are some free reading spreadsheet templates you can use:
With these reading tracker spreadsheet templates, you simple make a copy using Excel or Google Sheets, and then start editing it as your own. This is a simple, effective way to track your reading.
2. Track it on Goodreads.
Goodreads is a popular online platform for tracking your reading. This is another great way to keep track of all the books you read, as well as get book recommendations for what to read next.
While the platform is not perfect, Goodreads offers a robust set of features for anyone who is interested in tracking the books they read. You can add books to “shelves” to keep them organized (such as books you’ve read, books you want to read, books you didn’t finish, etc.) and you have the option to write a review and give a star rating to books you read after you finish them.
You can also set an annual reading goal and Goodreads will track your progress towards reaching your goal. And finally, Goodreads also tracks tons of interesting stats related to your reading overall, so if you like looking at graphs and numbers this will be perfect for you.
3. Keep a reading journal.
A final very simple way to track your reading is by keeping a reading journal.
In your reading journal, you can log the books you read and include additional information about them. Some ideas of things to include in your reading journal are the title of the book, author, dates you read it, and your thoughts or review of the book. You can also journal your thoughts or notes as you read.
While you can easily just keep a reading journal in a plain old notebook, there are also some really great reading journals out there that are designed especially for logging your books. Some of these contain journal prompts, pages for tracking reading statistics, and more.
What’s the Best Way to Track Your Reading?
I personally use all three of the above methods to track my reading. But that’s because I love seeing lots of statistics about what I’m reading and I find that the combination of a spreadsheet plus Goodreads gives me that. Then I keep a reading journal where I write my thoughts about each book after I finish it.
There’s no right or wrong way for how to track your reading. You can try out these options and see which works best for you! Whichever method you choose, it’s fun to track your reading and look back at the end of each year to see what you read. It can also help make reading more of a habit in your life.
Happy reading!
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