Miranda’s June Reading Wrap Up

Happy summer! I’ve been in a bit of a slump since June, though thankfully not as bad as the slump I was in during February. Part of it is that work has been busy, so when I get home I don’t have much energy to sit down and read; I also can’t listen to a lot of audiobooks because I had to be more active at work. Things should hopefully calm down now that work is slowing down again.

Of course, now I get to show off the spreads for my reading journal in June. And since it was Pride, of course I put rainbows everywhere.

After receiving the June sticker pack from Pipsticks, I decided to use all of them in this set up. I also used some scrapbooking paper. I especially loved the butterflies in the sticker pack.

I did manage to read 17 books and listen to 7 audiobooks in June. Three of them were rereads. I also DNF’d 6 books. Overall I read 3,116 pages and listened to 4,668 minutes of audiobooks. My favorite book in June was She Gets the Girl by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick — I swooned. My average rating for June was 3.5, which is the highest it’s been so far!

This is the second month I’m trying out a calendar in my reading journal, and I’m still really enjoying it, although I’ve found I forget to actually sit down and put the tape and stickers in (as you can tell by the absence of both in days 23-30). I’ll try to be better about it in July.

Last up is my mood tracker and a new feature I added in June!

I trimmed down the number of moods I tracked in July and drew a Pride flag as my tracker. Save for a handful of bad days (thanks, Supreme Court!) June was mostly okay for me.

After I wrote down my key, I still had a large space of unused paper on the left hand side. In May’s spread, I used it to stamp some flowers and color them in, but I didn’t have anything that I felt really fit in June. Then I decided to add a “gratitude log”. I tend to be a negative person, and with the world the way it is, I thought adding a gratitude log would maybe help me. This was added about a week into June so a lot of early days are blank because my memory is awful and I couldn’t really think of anything. It’s a work in progress, I think.

Now for the books I read in June…

I reread the first three volumes of Witch Hat Atelier, then got caught up to what the library has available. I also finally read Nimona, which was great. My favorite physical book was probably SPYxFAMILY, which was charming as hell.

I didn’t burn through as many audiobooks this month, which is a bit sad, but overall I liked most of the ones I listened to. The only one I was underwhelmed by was Daughter of Sparta, which started out strong but ultimately went on too long and proved not to be to my taste as far as the romance went. But, my favorite audiobook (and overall book) of June was She Gets the Girl, as I said before. Loved it. I hope these two authors write more together soon.

So that’s it for me! What did you read in June? If you have a reading journal, how did you decorate it last month?

Miranda’s May Reading Wrap Up

We’re into June, so it’s time to share my reading journal spread and stats!

For May, the theme I went with centered around the Norse Goddess of Constancy and Compassion, Sigyn. In the myths, she’s Loki’s second wife and mother to two of his children, Narvi and Vali. I’m more or less a devotee of hers, so I chose to depict her out in the sun and flowers, away from the cave where she joined Loki in his punishment.

The lyric is from Florence and the Machine’s “Heavy in Your Arms”, and my shaky attempt at an ampersand. Purple and blue are colors I associate with Sigyn, as well as keys and flowers, so those are represented here.

In May, I read 14 books amounting to 1,849 pages, and listened to 14 audiobooks, amounting to 7,455 minutes. My favorite book of May was “The Girls I’ve Been” by Tess Sharpe, and I didn’t finish 2 books. I read a lot of fantasy, a number of graphic novels, some memoirs and non-fiction, and romance. The average rating was 3.2. So, pretty normal, so far.

This is an idea I shamelessly stole from a friend. On the calendar, you use washi tape to mark how long it took you to finish a book. Since I was finishing audiobooks in a day, or sometimes I read a graphic novel in a day, I also used stickers to mark a finished book. (This is actually missing a bit of tape and stickers in the fourth week, but wev.) We also have more decoration for things I associate with Sigyn; a deer, flowers, purples and blues. I basically just threw everything at this spread.

Last but not least, my mood tracker. I decided to try making my own this month, and I’m more or less content with how it turned out. I don’t draw flowers very often, so I’m not great at them. On the other side, I put my key (and yes, I put “productive” down twice by accident; I shortened up my options for June’s tracker) and some more decoration.

So, that’s it for me this month! June’s theme is probably easy to guess. Let’s just say… it’s very colorful.

Miranda’s March Reading Wrap-Up

( A little late, but hey!)

March has come and gone, so it’s time to share my monthly spread from my reading journal. For March, I went with a Mardi Gras theme, because Easter isn’t really that big a deal for me. I definitely put all the work into the drawing and, when I got to the actual stats spread, I was like “idk just throw whatever on there.” So, a little lazy on my part, but oh well!

I don’t think it comes through on the picture, but I used Archer & Olive’s Arcylograph metallic markers for the beads, then a mix of Tombow and Copic for the rest of the outfit and lady. I had some foil cardstock that I cut up into random triangles just to give it more metallic sheen.

Now for the stats! I read 21 books in March, a big step up from my awful February stat of 7 books, totaling 3,161 pages. I DNF’d one book, and my average rating was 3.0. Unfortunately at the end of March I started listening to a bunch of audiobooks but I didn’t really have anywhere to put that statistic on this spread, but I listened to 2,725 minutes of audiobooks in March.

All in all, not a bad reading month.

I decided not to do a spread for my best book of the month, and going forward, I’m only going to do them if I have a solid idea of what I want. I don’t really see the point in making a spread about a book unless I can put stuff on it that actually relates to the book, instead of just whatever I have lying around. Maybe it’s a weird way to think about it, I dunno.

Unfortunately I missed two days in March for my Read Every Day challenge, but I had good excuses! On the 21st I had a migraine, and the 26th, I just… didn’t read. Oh well. I think I’m still doing pretty well.

I also have a new sticker page!

All of these except for the Belle sticker were purchased from RedBubble:

“I Heart Books” by renduh
“Books sticker” by deepfuze
“flowers growing from book” by andilynnf
“Pink and Blue Floral Bookstack” by Emma Mildred Riggle
Cat Tarot stickers by Thiago Corrêa
“Forest moon” by Laorel

And that’s it for my March reading journal spreads! What does your reading journal look like for March?

Reading Journal: February Spread

Playing a bit of catch up here by posting both of my monthly spreads for January and February this week.

I was a bit stuck on what to do as a theme for February. I didn’t want to do a Valentine’s Day theme, because… eh. So I racked my brain for a bit, and then I saw something on twitter called “Funguary.” People were drawing mushroom girls for something called Funguary, and I thought, “Yes. That. I want to do that.”

I only dabble in drawing, and my poor little fungus baby has a few mistakes. But I still think she’s cute.

I didn’t feel like drawing a whole bunch more, so I threw some mushrooms on there, then colored in the stats page with the colors from the theme. Then I used washi tape. A whole lot of washi tape. So much washi tape.

(Yes, I forgot to give my fungus baby some toes. I could go back and add some in, but… I could also not do that.)

Again, I’ve left space for when I add in the covers. I’ll get to it eventually! Promise!

(Narrator: She probably won’t.)

As for my favorite book of the month, The School for Good Mothers, I struggled a bit with making a spread for it. I used construction paper again and used a quote from the novel, because I liked it a lot. It was a sort of literary dystopian, light sci-fi novel. I don’t usually go for literary, but I really loved the world that was painted in this novel, as terrifying as it was. I’m still not 100% pleased with this, and I might play around with it some more.

And lastly, I have so many stickers I had to put in a new sticker spread. I think this is something I’ll keep doing, too, so I can use my stickers and keep them in a place where they won’t get damaged. A lot of these were bought off RedBubble. Since this is a spread kind of representing me, I have a few of my favorite things: Books, Alphonse Mucha art, Belle, a Tarot card, some cats, the moon, and a small golden key for my devotion to Sigyn, the Norse Goddess of Constancy and Compassion.

Have any bujo spreads for February? Lemme see!