The Ultimate Notion Book Tracker 📚 - Notes, Quotes, Reflections + Reading Sessions ✨ [03/06], by Nikki • Happy Habits Planners on YouTube. 7 min 1 s.
- Video length
- 7 min 1 s
- Time to do it
- 25 minutes
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Steps
- 10
What you need
Steps
Open your reading hub page in Notion and add a new database. Name it Reading Notes and give it a title property for the note heading.
Add properties for the book, a date, and a select property for note type. Use options like Quote, Reading Session and Reflection.
Create a relation property that links each note to your book database. Turn on the two-way relation so books show their notes too.
Add a rollup on the book database that pulls the note type or page number from the related notes.
Build three templates inside the Reading Notes database: one for a quote, one for a reading session and one for a reflection.
In the Quote template, add the quote text, page number and your reaction. In the Reading Session template, add start page, end page and minutes read.
In the Reflection template, add prompts such as what stood out and how the book made you feel.
Create database views for each note type, such as a gallery of quotes and a table of sessions. Filter each view by the note type property.
Set the Quote template as the default template for the Reading Notes database so new entries start with the right layout.
Open your Author database template and add linked sections for quotes and notes so they appear on each author page.
Tips and common mistakes
Use a formula like format(Genre) to turn a rollup into plain text so you can group entries by genre.
Style page numbers with a formula such as (" Page: " + Page Number).style("green", "yellow_background") to make them stand out in gallery views.
Filter every view by note type, otherwise quotes and reading sessions will mix together.
Add notes right after you finish a reading session while your thoughts are fresh.
Questions
Do I need a paid Notion plan?
No. Databases, relations, rollups and templates all work on the free personal plan.
Can I use this without an existing book database?
Yes, but you will need to create a simple book database first so the relation property has something to link to.
How do I keep quotes separate from reflections?
Use the note type select property and create a filtered view for each type, then set the matching template as default.
This guide was drafted from the video's details and general task knowledge. It has not been checked against the full video. Check the video and relevant product instructions before following a procedure. Report a correction.
