Earlier this year, I wrote about Reading Journals. I LOVE reading journals. I’ve been keeping them since spring 2019, when I started working toward my master’s degree in UC Riverside’s Palm Desert Low-Residency program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. (Hard recommend—it changed my life.)
All through school, I’ve been a Heavy Highlighter. Everything I read feels significant to me. I highlighted my books so much that it would have been easier to highlight what I didn’t find important or useful. So when I started my reading at UCRPD, I decided to try something different—I started keeping reading journals in these inexpensive but wonderfully soft Greenroom notebooks I bought at Target. Instead of highlighting, I wrote things down in my notebook: significant ideas, quotes I loved or that supported a theory I was working out, my own thoughts as I read the book. It worked beautifully—when I was highlighting, anything and everything was fair game, but when I had to actually stop and write things down in my notebook, I became more discerning. It made me stop and consider more carefully what was important. And when it came time to write a paper, it practically wrote itself because I had it all written down in my notebook. With page references! It also kept my books pristine for the next reader should I decide to loan or donate them.
In January, after I graduated from my MFA, I decided to continue to keep a reading journal. I celebrated being freed to read books of my own choosing by purchasing a gorgeous hardbound reading journal to track my 2022 year in books. The grounds for this celebration was a bit unfair to my MFA program because I was allowed to mostly read books of my own choosing during my MFA anyway. Still, it seemed like a good way to celebrate my newfound freedom from school, buying that beautiful reading journal and beginning my post-MFA life as a writer and reader.
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My super fancy 2022 reading journal.
Only guess what? 2022 is drawing to a close, and my fancy reading journal is empty. It’s not that I didn’t read books this year. I read a great many books. But I found I love my inexpensive little Target notebooks, and because I tend to buy things I love in bulk and in a run of colors, I had a few of them still lying around, waiting to be written in. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the elegant hardcover journal I bought because, although I do journal most mornings, I have a preferred inexpensive softcover journal for that activity, too (Peter Pauper Press Artisan Journals). In a run of colors (Filigree, Wildflower, and Cherry). My sister friend Gina gave me the lavender one as a travel journal a few years ago, and I’ve been in love with them ever since.
![](https://writewithme.leannephillips.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/GreenRoom-Notebooks.jpg)
My preferred and beloved cheap
softcover journals from Target.
Of course, as luck would have it, now that I’ve grown attached to my journals, both brands have been discontinued, but luckily I live in the age of eBay. So far, I’ve been able to stock up on my favorite reading journals and journal journals that way, but they’re not quite as inexpensive.