Hey hey, it’s MJ,

            I don’t know how we are already in March; I have no idea how that happened, but here we are. I also did not expect to read as much as I did in January and February, but again, here we are. I want to be able to go back to beginning of 2021 MJ and tell her that I have read like 20 books in the first two months of the year when last year I only read like eight books in two months. I blame BookTok and the fact that I have now trained myself to want to read 100 pages a day. It’s better than snacking or spiraling while overthinking because I do that more than I would like to admit. 

            Doing a book bullet journal this year has scratched an itch in my brain that I didn’t know that I had, it makes me happy and that’s really what’s important to me at the moment. I like making lists and crossing things off or updating things, if you have followed me for any length of time you know that. 

            I did post an overview of my Book Bullet Journal in December, so if you want to see the beginning pages, go ahead, there was nothing about my monthly layouts there so that’s always fun. 

            Let’s dive right in though, I like doing updates because it holds me accountable to actually doing it and that’s what I need at the moment, accountability. 

            All of my months are set up the same way and I know that I will make changes next year, I already have a list. This year is a learning year, a year where I can do proof of concept to see if it is sustainable, I did the same thing with my regular bullet journal and so far, so good. 

January: 

Cover: Simple like ringing in the new year and a quote from one of my favorite books from last year The Starless Sea (if you like fantasy, I would recommend it). Also, the highlighted days are days that I finished reading a book, it was just a last-minute thing that gave me a visual to see the number of books and how quickly I was reading them. There is no color on this one, I just kind of forgot to color in the gems, maybe I’ll do that later, who knows.

Books Read Page: Just a condensed visual of what I read, who it was by, and the dates that I read it. I track that through GoodReads too and several other places. I track a lot of things more than once because that’s just who I am as a person. 

Thoughts/Insights: I saw this layout on TikTok and I was like “yep, this is for me.” Text and visual is how I like to learn and how I like to see things so here we are and in January because I read nine books, eight fit here and one had to go in the back. (I am going to have more thoughts pages next year for sure.)

Monthly Stats: I started out with just the first column which is books read, books bought, genres I read, author breakdown, pages read, average rating, and # of five-star books. As well as the Book of the Month as well. I ended up adding Average page count, average reading time in days, and # to unhaul very late in January because I love stats and I am genuinely curious about all the things that I am tracking on a monthly basis. 

January Recap: I messed up on this one, oops. I don’t really like the colors so I am going to work on that as the months go on to make that standardized, I want all of them to look the same and I kind of dislike the colors on my ratings chart for sure as well as my format chart, the colors just make me a little angry and that’s just me. 

Monthly Book Stack: I have a yearly as well, I like the monthly as well though and I for sure made them bigger in February because these ones are too small and again, it was January, this is a building year for my book bullet journal. 

            Between each month I have an extra page so between January and February I have the covers of my Book of the Month books. 

February:

Cover: I liked the idea of stuff hanging, I chose hearts. My covers for my Book BuJo are super simple because my regular Bullet Journal is really detailed and I needed to not do that in two separate things, I would stop to be honest, I would just not do it; I know my limits. Also, a Princess Bride quote, because duh. 

Books Read: There are a lot more this month because I read 15 books in February (yes, that’s right, 15) In all honesty and fairness only about half of them were on my TBR, the other half were BookTok made me buy them. This month was a lot. 

Thoughts/Insights: So many books so little space. I will for sure being doing four pages instead of two when I do this next year. Yes, I am color coding the stars to the month I am reading them in. I love to color code.

Monthly Stats: Carbon copy of last month just different stats. 

Recap: Again, carbon copy of last month just with different stats. I know that’s a little repetitive and lame, but I like this one better. 

Monthly Book Stack: They are so much better than January and I really like the larger book style this month that I didn’t do in January. 

            This months between month page is my Book of the Month ratings, I didn’t subscribe to BotM until after I started my Book BuJo last summer so I had to add them in, next year they will just get their own pages at the beginning in the front. We are working on it y’all, working on it. 

            Well, that’s it for this update, I think there are enough updates in this post and pieces so here we are at the end and I will be back in April with another update, because I have a problem. 

            Until then though, I hope that everyone has a good rest of the week and you all stay safe, happy, and healthy.

            -MJ