There is a particular blankness that arrives when someone asks what you have been reading. You finished four books last month. You enjoyed them. Yet standing in the kitchen with a mug going cold, all you can retrieve is a cover, the vague sense of a coastal town, and the fact that you cried on the 07:42 to Leeds.

A reading journal fixes that. Not by turning reading into homework, but by giving you somewhere to put the good bits before they evaporate. It takes about two minutes per book once you have a system, and the system is easier to build than most guides suggest.

Choose a notebook you will actually carry

The best reading journal is the one within reach when you finish a chapter. That usually means smaller than you think. An A5 hardback with an elastic closure survives being shoved in a tote bag; an A6 pocket notebook lives in a coat pocket and gets used on trains. A gorgeous A4 leather-bound volume tends to stay on the desk, untouched.

Paper matters more than most people expect. If you write with a fountain pen, cheap paper will feather and bleed, and an annoying journal becomes an abandoned journal. With a biro or pencil, almost anything works. Ruled pages suit lists and dates; dotted or plain pages give you room for the odd reading map or diagram.

You do not need to spend much. A supermarket notebook and a pen you like will carry you through a year of reading. Buy the plain one first, work out what you actually record, then treat yourself to something better once you know.

Decide what the journal is for

Reading journals tend to do one of three jobs, and it helps to know which one you want before you start ruling columns.

• A log. Dates, titles, ratings, a line of summary. Useful for remembering what you have read and spotting patterns in your taste.
• A reading diary. Longer entries about how a book made you think and feel, written as you go.
• A commonplace book. Passages copied out, quotations, and the occasional word you had to look up.

Most people combine two of these, which is fine. What rarely works is designing an elaborate twelve-page monthly spread before you have written a single entry. Start with the simplest version and add structure when you notice you want it.

A first entry that takes two minutes

Keep your first entries short. Three lines is a finished entry. Have these fields ready and you will never stare at a blank page wondering what to say:

• Title and author
• Format — paperback, library copy, audiobook, ebook
• Date started and date finished
• A one-sentence summary in your own words, not the blurb's
• A rating, using the same scale every time
• Page numbers of anything you want to find again
• Where you were reading it, if that feels relevant

That last one is quietly important. A note that you read the final hundred pages in one sitting on a wet Sunday in October will mean more to you in five years than another four-star rating.

Writing reflections worth re-reading

The difference between a journal you keep and one you abandon is usually the quality of the questions you ask yourself. "I liked it" closes the conversation. These open it:

• What did this book remind me of — another book, a place, a person?
• Which character did I distrust, and was I right to?
• Did the ending earn what it asked of me?
• Who would I hand this to, and who should avoid it?

Write mid-read as well as at the end. Half-formed thoughts written on page 90 are often more interesting than a tidy verdict written a fortnight after finishing, when the details have blurred. You are not reviewing for a newspaper. Nobody is marking this.

Finished Saturday. Slow first hundred pages, then I could not put it down. The sister chapters were the best thing in it — I kept wanting her to have more room. Reminded me of the way my grandmother talked about the war. Would give this to Dad, not to Jo.

That entry took ninety seconds and will bring the whole book back in ten years.

Keeping momentum when the novelty fades

1. Store the journal with your current book. If they live together, one reminds you of the other.
2. Attach it to a habit you already have. Write the entry when you close the book at night, or on the bus home, rather than at some ideal future moment.
3. Never backfill. Skipped three weeks? Start with today's book. Guilt is the fastest way to kill a journal.
4. Record abandoned books. A line on why you stopped is useful information about your taste, and it stops the unfinished book nagging at you.
5. Flick back through it occasionally. A year of entries is the reward, and it is what keeps the habit alive.

Start with the book you are reading now

You do not need a new notebook, a reading challenge, or a fresh January. Open the book currently on your bedside table, write the title and the date, and add one sentence about where you are in it and what you make of it so far. That is a reading journal.

Tomorrow, add another line. Within a month you will have a record of your reading far more useful than a shelf of half-remembered books — and a habit that costs you almost nothing to keep.

Photo: Tima Miroshnichenko / Pexels