How to BUILD a Digital Book Library with Notion | Achieve your reading goals this year! ✨
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Reading is framed as a sustainable habit: start small, choose a consistent time, and anchor it to a routine rather than relying on large yearly targets.
Briefing
A practical Notion setup for tracking reading goals hinges on one idea: treat books like structured data, then connect that data to genres and per-book journaling. The result is a “Book Library and Reading Tracker” page built from two linked databases—one for books and one for genres—so progress, ratings, and reflections stay organized while views update automatically.
Before building, the session frames reading as a habit rather than a scoreboard. The recommended approach is to start small (even one page a day), pick a consistent time (often before bed to reduce screen time), and anchor reading in a routine like brushing teeth. Instead of forcing ambitious targets such as “50 books,” the guidance favors a short “want to read” list for motivation—without letting it grow so large it becomes overwhelming. It also encourages abandoning books that don’t click, rather than pushing through because they’re popular. For deeper engagement, a book journal is positioned as a way to reflect through prompts, summaries, and favorite quotes.
Notion is pitched as a reading tracker because it can be customized to match personal preferences and keep reviews more private than public community ratings. At the same time, it can be shared selectively with others who want to see thoughts. The workshop’s tracker is designed to be flexible: it includes a reading dashboard, genre-based filtering, and per-book details such as start/end dates, a bookmark-based progress bar, ratings, and a URL field for links. Each book entry also contains a “reading journal” area for notes, summaries, and quotes.
The build starts with an empty Notion page configured for readability (small text, full width, optional font/icon). The first step is creating the Book database with a table view and later a gallery view that uses book covers. Key properties include: - Author (select), publication date (date), total pages (number) - Bookmark (number) and start/end reading dates (date) - Status with categories like want to read, reading now, done, and paused - Reading progress as a formula that converts bookmark/total pages into a percentage (rounded for clean display) - Rating using star emojis (select) - Optional URL
Next comes the Genre database, also built with table and gallery views. Genres are linked to books through a relation property, enabling each genre to display only its associated books. A formula then counts how many books belong to each genre using the length of the related books set, with styling so the count appears as “X book(s)”.
Templates make the system usable at scale. A “new genre” template adds a filtered linked view of books for that genre, while a “new book” template provides structured space for summaries, favorite quotes, and a flexible reading journal. The session also covers common upgrades through Q&A: setting simple reading goals with checkboxes, supporting multiple journal types by duplicating templates or adding a third journal database, handling multiple genres per book via “No Limit” relations, and re-reading by changing status and optionally tracking “number of times read.”
For those who don’t want to build from scratch, a premium Notion template is mentioned as an expanded version with additional dashboards, reading lists, author tracking, daily journals, and a favorite quotes database. A free template link is offered for a limited time, with a discount code for the premium option.
Cornell Notes
The workshop builds a Notion “Book Library and Reading Tracker” that turns reading into a habit-friendly system backed by structured data. It relies on two linked databases: a Books database (with status, dates, pages, bookmark-based progress, ratings, and a per-book journal area) and a Genres database (with gallery/table views and a relation to books). Linked views and relations keep genre pages automatically updated with the correct set of books, while a formula counts books per genre using the length of related items. Templates for “new genre” and “new book” make adding entries fast and consistent, and Q&A covers goals, multiple journal types, multiple genres per book, and re-reading via status and optional “times read” tracking.
Why does the tracker treat reading as a habit instead of a goal-only metric?
How does the Books database compute reading progress in a way that stays readable?
What makes the genre dashboard update automatically when books change?
How do templates reduce friction when adding new entries?
What are practical ways to handle re-reading and multiple genres?
Review Questions
- If you wanted to track reading progress as a percentage, which two properties would you divide, and how would you format the result?
- How would you design a genre page so it shows only books tagged to that genre, and how would you count them?
- What changes would you make to support re-reading without losing the original reading history?
Key Points
- 1
Reading is framed as a sustainable habit: start small, choose a consistent time, and anchor it to a routine rather than relying on large yearly targets.
- 2
Notion is used for reading tracking because it supports customization, private reflections, and shareable dashboards.
- 3
The core build uses two linked databases—Books and Genres—so genre views update automatically when book entries change.
- 4
A formula-based progress bar calculates completion from bookmark divided by total pages, with rounding to keep the percentage clean.
- 5
Templates for “new genre” and “new book” standardize journaling fields (summary, favorite quotes, reading notes) and speed up data entry.
- 6
Q&A upgrades include simple goal tracking with checkboxes, multiple journal types via template duplication or an extra journal database, and re-reading via status plus optional “times read.”