Reading journal prompts
A reading journal is worth keeping when it records the reader as well as the book. What you copied out, what you argued with, and what was going on in your life the week you read it are the three things you will not be able to reconstruct later.
How to use these
Copy the passage out, then answer one prompt underneath it. That pairing is the whole method, and it turns a list of titles into a commonplace book.
While you are reading
Answer these mid-book, while you are still inside it and have not decided what you think.
- What passage did you stop at, and what made you stop?
- What is this book arguing, and do you believe it yet?
- What does the writer do with sentences that you would like to steal?
- Which character are you defending, and which are you unfairly against?
- What does this remind you of, from your own life or another book?
- What would you ask the author if you had one question?
- Where did you read this, and what was happening around you?
- What are you avoiding while you read this?
After you finish
Wait a day. The verdict at the last page and the verdict the next morning are usually different, and the second one is truer.
- What stayed with you a day later, once the plot faded?
- What did this book change your mind about, even slightly?
- Who would you give this to, and what would you say when you handed it over?
- What did it get wrong, or leave out?
- What sentence would you keep if you could keep one?
- Would you read it again, and when?
- What did you expect from it, and what did you actually get?
- How would you describe it to someone in two sentences, with no plot summary?
About your reading itself
Once or twice a year. These are the entries that show you the shape of your own taste.
- What have you been reading this year, and what does that pattern say?
- What are you not finishing, and is that the book or is that the month?
- What did you read at fifteen that you would defend now?
- What do you reread, and what do you get from it each time?
- What kind of book do you buy but never open?
- When did reading last feel like it did when you were a child?
- What would you like to have read by this time next year?
- What has a book done for you that nothing else could have?
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