Let’s dive in!

SUPPLIES

• Notebook

• Calliographs

• Your pen of choice

• Ruler

• Circle guide

Make sure to use my affiliate code PLANWITHEMM10 to save 10% at Archer and Olive.

MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK STACK

There’s nothing more satisfying to me than a big stack of books on my nightstand! At the beginning of the month, I gather titles from my TBR shelf and just pile them right on up. So it’s fitting that we make a book stack for the year to come with one caveat... They haven’t been released yet!

You might be wondering - well if they haven’t been released yet, how am I supposed to know about them? This bit can take a little bit of research but will make sure that you’re in the know about upcoming releases from your favorite authors. Here’s what I do:

1. Make a list of authors who wrote my favorite reads (either from the last year or of all time)
2. Head over to Goodreads and check out their profile. There’ll be a list of all of their titles, which you can then sort by publication year to see what new books are coming out soon. You might also find a recent release that you haven’t read yet, but we’ll save that for a later spread..
3. If there isn’t anything on Goodreads yet, you may want to check out the author’s social media. This is where you’ll get the earliest news of an upcoming publication, title or cover reveal, or any preorder incentives. Stores like Barnes & Noble will often offer 25% sales on preorders, so it helps to know what you want to order ahead of time!
4. Add the title to your list, then rinse and repeat!

Now that we have our list, we have to make our stack. This can be as small or as large as you’d like, based on the number of anticipated reads you have. All we’re going to do now is draw books one at a time until we have a completed stack. Drawing a book only takes two shapes: the straight lines for the cover and 2 slightly curved lines for the ends. You can experiment with the thickness of your book, how curved you want the ends to be, etc. You can also add some embellishments to the stack by coloring in the spines, lettering your titles, or adding fun doodles. Once I’ve made my list of reads, I plan to mimic the cover’s lettering on the spine!

You could also wait to color in the spine until you’ve read the title, or add a cute little check mark off to the side.

25 in 2025

There’s one rule and one rule only for the 25 in 2025 challenge: The book needs to be published by December 31st, 2024. That’s IT! This challenge is all about reading your backlist, aka the books you said you were going to read but never got around to. Several of these are floating around Instagram and Goodreads and often have challenge groups to keep you accountable too!

Start by drawing 25 rectangles on your page. I sized mine to be approximately the dimensions of a book cover and this 5 by 5 grid of covers fit perfectly in an A5 journal. I also added a bit of color here, but you could go completely monochrome! Then you just need to decide how you’ll want your finished spread to look. You could write in the title with a check box, color in the rectangle when it’s finished, or even print out and glue in the book cover. I plan on doing the last option, if only because I love how the cover art looks!

Then all you have to do is decide on 25 backlist books you want to read in 2025, aka the fun part. Last year I picked 24 titles by BIPOC authors and I really enjoyed that theme! I may also consult with my book club so that I have someone to buddy read each title with for accountability. Another similar challenge is 12 books 12 friends where each book is recommended to you by a friend!

YEAR IN BOOKS

To begin, I just want to note that you can make this spread whenever you want (not just at the end of the year). I usually make these at the end of each month, but you could do them quarterly, halfway through the year, really any time. The only thing that you really need to do is track the genres, format, author, and amount of books that you’re reading. No tracker? No problem. You can keep a list in a notebook, on your phone, or even in a spreadsheet. I’ve linked one spreadsheet tracker here, but there are TONS out there. Having to backfill a tracker can be arduous, but it makes your life so much easier once it’s done. I try to update my spreadsheet whenever I finish a book, but realistically I’m filling it out each weekend.

With our tracking list in hand, then it’s time for a little bit of easy math. This is where having a spreadsheet really helps because it’ll do the math for you, but I promise it’s simple enough! All we’re going to do is count up the number of books in each genre, then divide by our total books read to get a percentage. Then assign each genre a color, and draw in the color-coded percentages for each genre in the pie chart. This will show you which genres you read the most! For me, I anticipate that it’ll be mostly romance, fantasy/sci-fi, and mystery/thriller! We’ll do the same thing for our book format (i.e. physical, ebook, or audiobook).

For our monthly reading, all we’ll do is color the boxes until we’ve colored the same amount as the number of books we read that month. We’ll repeat this for each month until we have a cool graph of the entire year. This will let you see when you read the most books, and it may surprise you! For me, my best months are January (29 books) and June (27 books). This is consistent with when I was traveling the most, as I had nothing to do but read on my flights. 

I would argue that this is the MOST fun spread because it gives you so much insight into your reading habits. What genres do I like? What formats do I read most? Which months of the year am I reading more often? These statistics can then help you shape your next reading year! If you felt like you didn’t read anything great in 2024, try branching out into your less read genres. Maybe you’ll find that you’re secretly a fiend for romance novels or have an interest in memoirs.

I’ve included printable versions of the challenge and stats pages for you to use in your own journals. I can’t wait to see what your versions look like!

And voila! We’ve catalogued the books we want to read this year, started a fun reading challenge, analyzed our reading statistics for the last year, and had a great time doing it. Remember that your reading journey is uniquely YOURS, so enjoy it!  You can also check out the associated YouTube video for these spreads and check out this blog for more reading journal ideas.