Paper journals get abandoned in March. This one asks for one line when you finish a chapter and keeps every quote, note and review attached to the book it came from — free, private by default, no account needed.
Free · Private by default · Works offline · 7 languages
Almost everyone who keeps a reading journal has abandoned one first. The pattern is always the same: it starts as a beautiful notebook with a full page per book, the first three entries are long and careful, and then a busy fortnight arrives, four books go unrecorded, and the gap becomes the reason to stop. The failure is never lack of interest — it is that the format asked for too much.
The version that survives is much smaller. A rating when you finish. A quote when a line stops you. A sentence about why you liked it, written while you still remember. That is enough to make a book findable again in two years, which is the entire point of keeping one.
So Niovela is built around the thirty-second entry, not the full page. Everything you write is attached to the book, so nothing needs filing, and your journal is private unless you decide otherwise.
Four decisions that keep a journal alive past March.
A rating, a quote, one line. There is no empty page waiting to make you feel behind.
Quotes, reviews and progress live on the book's page. No filing, no separate notebook, nothing to organise later.
Your journal is yours. Reviews, quotes and who you follow each have their own switch, and nothing is public until you flip one.
Installable like a native app and fully usable with no connection — so you can write the quote in the moment, not later.
The written side of reading, not just the counting.
Save the lines that stop you, with the book they came from. The part of reading that disappears fastest if you do not write it down.
Write what you actually thought while you still remember it — a paragraph is plenty, and it beats a star rating six months later.
Page progress, start and finish dates, rereads and ratings. Enough to reconstruct a reading year without trying.
Build your own lists: a mood, a challenge, a summer. And export the whole thing as JSON or CSV whenever you want.
A place to record what you read and what you thought about it: ratings, dates, quotes and notes. A digital one has the advantage of being searchable and of being in your pocket at the moment you want to save a line.
Yes — free, ad-free, and with no paid tier.
No. Your journal is saved on your device and you can use everything without signing up. An account is optional, only to sync between devices.
Yes, by default. Nothing is visible to anyone else unless you deliberately make it public, and reviews, quotes and follows are controlled separately.
Yes, as many as you like, and each one stays attached to the book it came from — so a quote you saved two years ago still tells you where it is from.
Yes: Settings → Export gives you everything as JSON or CSV, any time. Your writing is not held hostage.
Import your Goodreads library in about five minutes and start from where you already are.
Start your journal with one book and one line — free, no account needed.
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