I’ve kept reading logs hit or miss for the last several years. I’ve created my own and used store bought ones, but none of them have ever seemed to stick. I get overwhelmed or hit a reading slump or something happens and I just stop updating them.

Part of the problem, I think, is that I have been trying to track all of the things that seem important to other people. Things like percentages of books read from different categories like genres, diverse MCs, page length, whatever. I would see these bloggers with huge followings share stats filled posts to wrap up the year and I thought it was so cool. And I wanted to be like that too.

But I’m me, and as much as I would like to think that tracking all of those things seems cool, my neurodivergent brain can’t handle all of that. And to be honest, it’s really not the information that I want or need to collect on what I’ve read. So this year my reading log will be a bit different.

As much as I would love to do a gorgeous bookshelf design in my bullet journal where I color in each book with the title name as I read it, I’m just not that creative. I mean I am using a bullet journal, and I will use stencils to make it as pretty as possible, it’s still basically going to be just lists written on the pages. And I’ll only be tracking the things that mean something to me: Books read, authors read, star rating, and a list of new to me authors.

While it is important to me to diversify my reading, I look at that more when I am adding books to my shelves rather than actually reading them. And I am much more conscious of that now than I was a few years ago. I made a big push to diversify my shelves at that time, so now it has become more natural for me to look at books that are written by authors of all races, religions, identities, and abilities, so that is not something I consciously track any longer.

As for the other stuff, I don’t really care how much I read from each age group, or whether I’m reading more fiction than nonfiction, or what percentage of my reading is memoirs. That’s just not important to me. And while I do read across genres, no matter how much I track my reading, romance will always be the genre I read from most (followed by fantasy usually). So I just don’t see the point, for myself.

I will continue to read everyone else’s year end break downs with all of their pie charts and stats. I think it’s fascinating to see the detail some readers get into when they track. But I’ve finally learned that what works for them isn’t what works for me. And for me, simplicity works.