As we move well into the Lunar New Year of the Ox (check your montly horoscopes here), it feels like the time to do something both creative and practical, fun and therapeutic. I’m talking about starting a book journal, or #bujo for short.

I wrote about this recently on the Supernatural Underground but wanted to share more here, especially now that I have STARTED and have images of my own to show you.

Why a Book Journal?

Book journals can:

1. Encourage us to read more, and that is healthy for you and everyone around you.
2. Activate the imagination through engagement with books
3. Allow for more creative flow (fill the tanks)
4. Help organize random thoughts
5. Become life journals reflecting personal growth and insights
6. Get people writing more
7. Structure key impression for more detailed book reviews
8. Offer a therapeutic process for recording feelings and experiences
9. Keep favorite characters alive, also very good for the health. (Read more about social surrogacy and parasocial relationships with fictional characters.)

Starting a Book Journal

Are you convinced to start one yet? All you need is a notebook, pens, paste and possibly a printer, tape, and glue. (I’ve ordered washi tape but it hasn’t arrived yet.)

Here is an inspiring YouTube Vid on getting started: 2021 Reading Journal Setup | Plantmas Day 10.

You can use a plain notebook, or go for something more like a leatherbound dream journal. It’s up to you, but if you want to use watercolours, sumi-e inks or other more potent materials, make sure your pages can stand up to it.

You also might want to print cover images, quotes and reviews, author images and tips from websites to bring in a collage effect.

Make it Your Own

Book Journaling content doesn’t have to be confined to books you read and want to review. As mentioned above, the #bujo (‘bullet journal’ as tagged on Instagram and Twitter) can be a life journal filled with inspirations, visions, tarot spreads, dreams of note and import, quotes and fresh ideas.

It may even become your grimoire with spells, recipes, herbs, moon guides, manifesting techniques and wisdom gained from higher guidance.

In essence, your book journal becomes a part of you, a collaboration with the Muse to acknowledge and honor the experiences of life, large and small, fictional and real.

If you have already begun your book journal for 2021, let me know. I’d love some tips and tricks or just plain old encouragement as I begin this multimedia journey.

If you haven’t considered it, I hope you do.

See you in the pages.

xxKim (aka AK Wilder)