Hey friends! Elizabeth here from Plant Based Bride back again with another video and today i'm super
excited to do a flip through of my reading journal for the first six months so i started this journal
back in january of this year i haven't had the chance to update y'all on how the spreads are
going in the past few months so i'm excited to show you how everything's looking as you
might already be able to tell this is a pretty chunky journal right now let me give you a view
on this this is my notebook so far i am using the square morning sun notebook from archer and olive
and it is pretty full so this is six months worth of reading journal spreads and it's already having
a little bit of trouble staying closed so it'll be interesting to see what happens by the end of 2021
and without further ado let's get into this flip through so the inner cover looks the
same as it did when i did the initial setup i'll link that video in the card and in the
description box down below if you want to watch the setup and see how i created the yearly spreads
of course there's my cover page and quote page and then we get into my index which
is a little more used than the last time you saw it i've just been writing in each
spread and the page number as i go and there's lots of space left for the rest of the spreads
moving on to my 2021 reading tracker and i'm doing pretty well here i'm more than halfway
to my goal of 125 books this year and i've just been loosely filling in each box with
my tombow dual brush pen in 990 as i go and i really like how this spread is turning out
moving on to my next spread which is my 21 books in 2021 spread and this was really
just a 21 anticipated reads spread so 21 books that i was really excited to read this year
and i've been doing pretty well i've read one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 11
12 13 of the 21 books so far and i own these three so i have a couple more that i'm gonna get to
soon moving on to my next spread which is my 2021 book bracket as you can see it's empty
i actually decided i wanted to leave this until the end of the year to fill out so the plan
for the spread is to put my favorite read from january february march april may june july august
september october november december here and then do a little bracket to figure out my favorite of
those two my favorite of those two etc to find my favorite of the year but i kind of wanted
to do this at the end of the year when i had full perspective on all of the reads instead of trying
to pick my favorite month by month and i think i might make a whole video of me filling out this
whole book bracket and determining my favorite of the year let me know in the comments if you'd be
interested in that i thought that could maybe be a fun video to share at the end of 2021 so for now
i'm leaving this blank moving on to my next spread which was for arcs and i've had a couple this year
i've tried to be a little more responsible about requesting them and i'm trying to not request too
many just because i've been pretty busy this year so far and also just feeling a little bit more
mood ready this year i've been in a bit of a reading slump on and off in 2021 so i really
don't want to force myself to read books i'm not excited about so i've been trying to request fewer
arcs and i have read more than half of the arcs that i've had this year but i am a little behind
because of my move so i need to get on it the next spread as you can see on the left is still
empty this is actually going to be for all of our book club picks for the year and then this spread
looks exactly the same this is my reading goals which i think i'm doing all right on so here we
are getting into the monthly spreads so this is my january tbr and january cover page my tbr is
in here so cute little list with my tbr in it and hopping into some individual book spreads here so
the first bread here is for the midnight library by matt haig this was our first book club read
of the year and i loved it i gave it five stars so this is my little spread for this book here
then we have the vanishing half which was another five star read in january here we have stamped
by jason reynolds and ibram ex candy this one has quite a few pages because it's essentially
a history of racism from before america became a country up to today and it was pretty detailed
and extensive so because i'm not american and i don't know a lot about american history i really
dove in headfirst and tried to absorb as much information as i could from this book i just
feel like it really gave me a lot of context for the current situation in america when it
comes to race so i took quite a few notes uh here chronological order so moving through the years
as you can see, i took a lot of notes, and up to the modern-day
and here we have two more five star reads from January a life on our planet by David Attenborough
all about the climate crisis and cast the origins of our discontents by Isabel Wilkerson which is
about again racism in America so both of these were incredible reads I gave each five stars,
and these are my spreads for them and the last bread for January my January stats
so these are the stats for all the books that I read in January of this year moving on to February
here with a bit of a valentine's day love theme again I have my tbr in this cute little envelope
the first spread here is for again our book club pick for february which was the house
in the cerulean sea by tj cloon so this is the spread i created for this book here i found some
really awesome fan art of the characters which i was really excited to include in the spread here
then we have they said this would be fun i actually have a video where i am talking about
this book and setting up the spread so i'll link that in the card and in the description box down
below if you want to check it out and hear more about my thoughts on this book in particular and
also just in general i'll link down below any of the videos i have relating to my reading journal
if you want to watch any of the spreads as they're set up instead of just in review
then we have two more spreads for grown by tiffany d jackson and that could be enough by alyssa cole
again two more five star reads also if you wanted to hear my thoughts
and reviews on any of these books i'll link down below the playlist of my book videos where i do
wrap ups each month just giving quick reviews of every book that i read whether i'd recommend them
thoughts content warnings all that stuff so check those out if you want to learn more
about my thoughts because i'm not sure even if you paused and zoomed in that you'd be able to
read my handwriting it is pretty messy then we have my february stats here moving into march
and the first spread here for march was for our book club pick that month which
was word [ __ ] by amanda montel this was definitely not a perfect book by any means
but i did find it very enlightening very interesting and it sparked a very long and
in-depth conversation within the book club which was really awesome to be a part of
next we have my spread for winter's orbit by evarina maxwell and oh my goodness i adored
this book i got this as an arc from netgalley and i just inhaled it it's a sci-fi mlm romance
and it's just next level amazing i adored it new favorite for sure then we have two
more books that i read and adored in march we have fierce femmes and notorious liars by kai chang tom
and the downstairs girl by stacy lee this one is sort of a magical fictionalized memoir
i guess contemporary but kind of fantastical and then the downstairs girl is historical fiction
then we have the spread that i created for the broken earth trilogy i decided to make one for
the whole trilogy because i did finish reading the stone sky in march but i read the first two books
last year before i started a reading journal and i really wanted a spread just for all three because
this series is incredible and if you have not heard me gush about it already let me take two
more seconds to gush about it if you are into fantasy if you enjoy fantasy please pick up this
trilogy it is so so so good i can't even there are not words to describe how much i love it it
is pretty intense i would recommend seeking out content warnings i include them in my goodreads
reviews as well as in my wrap-up videos on youtube so you can check those out if you want to see um
what i would consider content warnings for this trilogy but it's amazing i adored it this fan art
is giving me life and honestly looking at the spread right now is making me want to start the
series all over again so i might have to read it all again before the end of the year then we come
to the march stats 11 books read in march moving on to april here a bit of a rainy moody vibe
and here we have the memory police which was our book club pick for april which i loved gave it
five stars and the hill we climb by amanda gorman which i also gave five stars and just absolutely
adored and that's it for april i read nine books in april but i didn't have as many wins that month
so only two books that i really felt i wanted to immortalize in my reading journal but here are the
stats getting into may here our book club pick the little paris bookshop this is the first book club
pick that i did not enjoy i gave it two stars um just not at all for me and then this is how you
lose the time war which was a hundred percent for me i gave it five stars a sci-fi novella written
in very poetic letters back and forth between these two characters just fantastic adored it
then we have the cost of knowing which was another arc from netgalley that i gave five stars
just very poignant very intense and timely and then we have the empress of salt and fortune
which i also gave five stars this is a novella a fantasy novella and it was amazing i read it
twice in may well i listened to the audiobook and then i read it in ebook form and i really really
enjoyed it so i would highly recommend then i have inside out and back again and other words for home
these had a lot of similar qualities which is why i wanted to put them on a spread together
and they were both wonderful inside out and back again is the story of ha who is coming to america
as a refugee from vietnam at the beginning of the vietnam war and then other words for home
is the story of judah coming to america with her mother to escape violence in syria and they were
both just heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time both ha and judah were just incredible
protagonists loved both of them they're both middle grade and i would highly recommend them for
children and adults alike then we get into my may stats here read nine books in may
and then we get to the final month in my reading journal so far june i did not finish a lot of
books in june because i moved across the country and had zero time so i only finished four books
in june the first book i finished in june was one last stop by casey mcquisten which i gave
five stars loved it i reread to be taught a fortunate by becky chambers actually listened
to it on audiobook in the car with my husband while we were driving to our new province and i
knew he would love it and he did and i loved it just as much listening to it again so we didn't
have a book club pick for this month just because i knew i wouldn't have time to commit to reading
any particular book or to do a discussion so no book club pick for this month and that is
it we get into the empty pages after that and i do still have about half of this notebook left
to go so we shall see how chunky this notebook gets once i've gotten to the end i'm actually
really excited about it there's something so satisfying about a notebook that looks like this
it's just really been used i would love to know if you've read any of the books that i
immortalized in my reading journal what your thoughts were on them uh what your thoughts
are on my reading journal in general do you have a reading journal would you ever consider making one
is there a spread that i'm missing that you think i should definitely be including in here let me
know all the comments share them down below i'm really excited to share this with you i've been
working hard on this through the year but again haven't been able to share it with you for a while
so it's fun to give you a little update and show you how far we've come here so
i hope you enjoyed this video and i will see you really soon in my next one bye friends
you