Reading journal November 2023

Before I start a new reading journal for 2024, I want to finish the one for 2023.

For November I managed to finish my spreads somewhere towards the end of December.
I had picked out the different elements I wanted to use quite early on – pictures, papers, stickers, colours, etc. – but I dawdled quite a while putting it all together on the pages. In the end I only made the title page at the beginning of December, while I usually try to do that at the beginning of the month in question.

I went for a fairly autumnal theme and colours, which is appropriate for November.
Originally I had also intended to use ice blue markers to combine with the rest, but in the end I stuck to a warm colour palette.

Once the title page has been created, the rest usually follows quite easily, but here I had a bit of a blockage, which meant that it took far too long for the next spreads to come together. At the same time, I also procrastinated quite a bit in writing my reviews, so the individual book pages also remained empty for a long time.

In the end I am quite happy with the result. It all meshes well together and I’m a very fond of the colour palette.
I’m also happy I could use an art print for “Howl’s Moving Castle” that had been hidden away in one of my many boxes with artwork. At least it serves a purpose now and looks really good!

Due to all my November-dawdling, December naturally also racked up quite the delay.
As of today, there is still nothing on the pages for December and while I’m writing this, I don’t have the intention to force myself to finish it. For now, I’m rather itching to work on my 2024 reading journal, so I’ll be focussing on that.

Really, I make these reading journals because I like creating the pages and writing the reviews and love looking back on them. It’s quite a lovely memory. But sometimes there are period when I feel less like working on it, but being the completionist that I am, these things quickly become obligations in my head, which usually have the oposite effect on my enjoyement.
So for now, I’ll try to be more nice to myself and not make myself do something I don’t really feel like doing, just for the sake of completing something. No drama, no obligations, only if I want to.
So time will tell if you’ll ever see my reading journal for December 2023. In any case, I already started working on my yearly spreads for 2024 and I’m itching to continue. So you’ll at least have that to look forward to!

Cheers,
Charlotte