April Bookish Bullet Journal

My Bullet Journal while heavily book focused is usually more function over form. I rarely draw or do any kind of flourishes instead keeping it fairly minimal. That is until April and August, the Magical Readathon months, where I like to do something a little special to celebrate. Last August I did a Daily prophet and Quibbler page to with all the prompts I needed to read and I loved it so much I just had to mimic it again. So here is my April set up.

Cover Page

Of course I have to rep my house in my cover page! I have been doing a Art Deco inspired cover page for the other months in the year all based around the colour scheme I have picked for that month, but have switched it up to radiate Ravenclaw pride this month. Of course my colour scheme is also Blue and Bronze!

Monthly Spread

I haven’t really made any changes to this section. This is how I tend to draw it every month. I have a calendar to have little notes at a glance. I will usually include symbols for events such as blog post days, mark out holidays or if its a birthday the persons name. I have a section to note scheduled blog posts, and what books I have written reviews for and what has still to be reviewed – this is really important this year as I am trying to review every book I read even if its just a mini review.

I then have my TBR and reading stats page. This has a short column for my TBR, then a large section i can fill in with the covers of all the books I read. I also mark the ratings and then to an over view of the month so I can easily grab that information when i write my wrap up posts.

Page Tracking and OWLs Cover

The page tracking page is another thing I include every month. It really gives me insight into when I read a lot and when my reading dips. I also mark what days I finish books on this too so I can see how my reading is spaced throughout the month.

I decided to stick with the Educational Decree as the cover page for the O.W.Ls this year too as I just really like how clean it looks but it also is really bold. I like to get to play a bit with different font work too. Basically I think it looks pretty.

O.W.L Prompts

I am super proud of how this page turned out this year. I managed to get all the prompts on one page. I had to add a little filler text to make it see as busy as the Daily prophet usually looks and I also added stickers or various elements to give it that news paper feel. This set up definitely works better with the NEWTs as there are a lot more prompts to work with but I still think it turned out awesome.

I do love thinking up fun ways to fit them all in, trying different font work and putting in little jokes to make me smile when i read back over it. I need to go back in and put my completion tick boxes for a couple of the prompts as I forgot to include them while drawing but overall I am happy with it.

Example of Book Review page

Spoiler alert for my review of the first O.W.L I finished – Queen of Hearts by Colleen Oakes but I thought I would give you an example of one of my review pages. I start one of these for every book I read, apart from graphic novels and short books/Agatha Christie books which get the mini review format version.

In the top section I track when I started and finished it, if its part of a series, how many pages my copy has and my rating and if I have posted my review on my blog. I have sticker paper where I can print out the book covers for books on my TBR and that I have read that lets me have a more colourful pages. In my yearly pages I have colleges of the book cover stickers and I really like looking back at them and seeing all the books i have read over the year/

The next section I don’t fill in till I have finished the book. It is my ESCAPE reviewing system I use for all my reviews and I fill in a couple of sentences about my thoughts to help when I come to type them up in my review. it also has the score for each section so I can generate my overall rating.

Finally I have an open section for thoughts while I am reading. Sometimes I add quotes I came across other times just thoughts and musings. This also helps with my reviews.

Weekly page, Tasks and Mini review

This is a bit of a busy couple of pages. I draw these on Sunday in preparation for the upcoming week. Anything in advance of the week goes on my monthly page.

On the Left the page is split in two. The upper have is my running task list for the week. These are tasks that are over multiple days, standing appointments. I mark them with a bullet point on the day at the top and then a cross if they are complete. in the lower half i have a mini Review set up. As they don’t go through the ESCAPE system I shorten this down to just the stats and the note sections and it works well for me.

The weekly page is fairly plain I just mark specific tasks/notes etc with a bullet or a dash. I do track my reading here too as this is a Bookish bullet journal and I do that using mini version of the book cover stickers. As I switch between multiple books I tend to have quite a few covers per day and underneath them i just quickly mark the number of pages i read in each. If i finish it i mark it as finished too.

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That is my Bookish Bullet Journal for April. If you would like to see more of my 2020 bullet journal set up then just let me know. I will have to start thinking about what I am going to do for the NEWTs – more daily prophet or something different – what do you think?

I would love to chat all things bookish with you! You can comment down below or find me on Twitter or Goodreads!

Happy Reading!