Notion Reading List Template: Rated Picks and a Library Build

The simplest start is Notion's own Reading list template (4.85 from 860 reviews) or My Library (Book Tracker) by siddh (4.86 from 915): they're the two most-reviewed listings in the set below, and both are free. Whichever you pick, the setup that lasts is one Library database: a Type property for books, articles and podcasts, a Status, a Progress bar, a gallery Shelf with covers and a "Book notes" journal template. If a template lacks those parts, I'd build it myself, since it's a short list of properties and four views.

If you save articles, videos and podcasts next to books, choose Notion's Reading list: its listing describes "a dashboard to help you track all of the articles, videos, podcasts, blog posts, Twitter threads, and yes, books." If books are the whole point and you want covers on a shelf today, start from one of the most-reviewed book trackers and run the quick check below. If you want progress, a yearly count and notes that work the same way for every item, build the Library from the steps here. Below: the ratings behind those picks, the properties and Progress formula, four views, a yearly count, the notes template, and where Web Clipper pages and Readwise highlights land.

Notion reading list templates, by the numbers

This composite covers 34 Notion Marketplace listings: all 24 in Notion's Books template category and the 10 in Notion's Top 10 Free Reading List Templates collection. The star rating, review count and listed price come from each listing's own page. These are marketplace user ratings, not tests: they record how marketplace users rated each template, not how its progress or counts are built. 27 listings carry a rating, 7 show none, and every listing in this set is free.

What the ratings show, and what they don't

• The stars barely separate them. Across all 27 rated listings the median is 4.89, the range 3.67 to 5.00, from 2,983 reviews, and the review-weighted average is 4.84. The 11 reading templates in the table sit within 0.15 of each other, 4.80 to 4.94 from 2,812 reviews. The five with 100 or more reviews run 4.80 to 4.88, median 4.85, from 2,679 reviews.
• Reviews pile onto a few listings. The three most-reviewed listings hold 81% of all reviews in the set: siddh's, Shalz Techie's and Notion's own.
• A 5.0 says little on its own. Ten listings are rated 5.0, each from 1 to 51 reviews, and the one with 51 is a character builder for writers, not a reading list. A separate listing also named "Reading list" shows 5.0 from 4 reviews; it isn't Notion's template, which sits at 4.85 from 860.
• "Books" isn't a reading filter. Only 8 of the 24 Books-category listings are reading templates. The other 16 are writing tools (story bibles, character builders, worldbuilding and plot planners) plus a fanfic tracker, a comic tracker, a book club kit and a learning tracker.
• Reading templates overall: 18 of the 34 listings, 17 of them rated, with 2,830 reviews and a median of 4.86. The lowest rating in the whole set belongs to a 2024 yearly list, 3.67 from 3 reviews.

So the stars won't choose a structure for you. Choose by structure instead, with five questions you can ask of any reading template before you duplicate it.

A quick check before you duplicate

1. Does it handle articles and podcasts, or only books?
2. Is progress calculated from pages, or a percentage you type in by hand?
3. Is there a Finished date, so you can count books per year?
4. Does each book open into a notes page with headings?
5. Does it depend on a third-party add-on for book search or covers?

If a template misses two of these, I'd build instead, since you'd be rebuilding its properties anyway. The rest of this guide is that build, and each part answers one of the five questions.

Build the Library database

A reading list in Notion is one database; everything else is a view, a property or a page template on top of it. Notion's own reading list guide calls it "a dynamic table with properties such as dates, select menus, text, and links to classify each entry." I'd keep books, articles, podcasts and videos in that one table with a Type property and split them with views, the same one database, many views rule that keeps any workspace tidy. Three reasons: the Web Clipper saves into one database you choose, Notion's own template already mixes media, and a single Finished date counts everything you complete in a year.

Notion's database properties help describes Status tags "categorized by To-do, In Progress, or Complete", so the three groups are fixed and you name the options inside them: Want to read sits in To-do, Reading in In Progress, and both Finished and Abandoned in Complete.

Calculate progress from pages

Add the formula from the slider icon at the top of the database → Edit properties → New property, select Formula, name it Progress, then select Edit formula and paste:

if(prop("Status") == "Finished", 100,
   if(prop("Pages") > 0, min(round(prop("Pages read") / prop("Pages") * 100), 100), 0))

Read it from the outside in. The outer if() condition returns 100 for anything marked Finished; Notion's formulas help says if() "returns the first value if the condition is true; otherwise, returns the second value." The inner if() returns 0 when Pages is empty or zero, so articles and podcasts without a page count show 0. round() turns the ratio into a whole percent, and min() caps it: Notion's formula reference says min returns "the smallest number of the arguments", so a Pages read typed past the page count still stops at 100.

Worked through on the sample book "The Quiet Garden": 320 pages with 112 read gives 112 / 320 = 0.35, times 100 is 35, so Progress shows 35. Set its Status to Finished and Progress shows 100, even if Pages read still says 112. An article with no Pages value shows 0. If you open the formula editor from a database row, the help says "you'll see a live preview of the result of the formula for that row", which makes it the easiest place to check the parentheses.

I'd calculate from pages rather than type a percentage by hand: the page count and the page you're on are numbers you already know, and the bar is a display setting, not extra work. Notion's release notes on progress bars give the path: "Click on any of your number or formula properties, then Edit property", where you can "Show the number as a bar or ring visualization", "Choose a color" and "Divide by a custom number". Pick the bar and divide by 100, since the formula already returns 0 to 100. If you'd rather draw a text bar with repeat(), the repeat() progress bar guide compares it with the built-in Bar and Ring.

Add covers

Each book needs one image, and there are two places for it: the page's own cover, or a Cover property of type Files & media. The properties help says a Files & media field lets you "upload a file, or paste a link to embed a file", so a photo of your own copy works as well as an image link. Either way, you add the image yourself.

Four views: Shelf, Reading now, Articles & podcasts, Finished

A view changes how the records look, not the records. Notion's views, filters and sorts help says "Each database view has its own settings": Layout, Property visibility, Filter, Sort, Group and Sub-group. So the same Library can show covers in one tab and a plain link list in the next.

Shelf: a gallery of covers

1. Click + next to the database name and select Gallery. Name the view Shelf.
2. Open the settings menu at the top right → Layout → Card preview, and choose Page cover, or your Cover property if you use one.
3. Turn Fit image on. The galleries help says that when it's on, "the entirety of the image will fit within the frame of the card"; when it's off, the image is cropped to fill the card. You can also hover over a card image and select Reposition to drag it into place.
4. Click Card size and pick the size that suits your covers.
5. In Property visibility, show Author, Status and Progress. For a pure cover wall, open the Properties menu and switch off Name.
6. Add a filter on Type set to Book.
7. Under Layout → Open pages in, choose Full page. Galleries open pages in center peek by default, and a full page gives the book's notes room.

For image sizes and the rest of the card settings, the Notion gallery view guide goes further than a shelf needs.

Reading now: a board by Status

Add a Board view grouped by Status. The views help says you can "use it as a Kanban board to move tasks from one status to another", so starting a book is one drag from Want to read to Reading. If you only want what's open, a table filtered to Status set to Reading does the same job with less on screen. I'd use the board while you're picking the next book, because the Want to read column sits right next to what you're reading.

Articles & podcasts: a plain table

For everything that isn't a book, add a Table view filtered to Type set to Article, Podcast or Video. Show URL, and hide Pages and Progress in this view only; Property visibility works per view, so the Shelf keeps its bars. Notion's reading list guide notes "you could decide to only view the things you haven't read yet", and a second filter that leaves out Finished and Abandoned does exactly that here.

Finished: newest first

Filter a Table or List view to Status set to Finished and sort it by the Finished date, descending. The latest book is always on top, and it's the list you'll scroll when the year ends.

Count the books you finish this year

Start with a Formula property named Finished this year:

year(prop("Finished")) == year(now())

Notion's formula reference says year() "Returns the year of the date" and uses year(now()) as its own example, so the comparison is true for anything with a Finished date in the current calendar year. Then type /chart on a page, select Number chart, link the Library database, filter the chart to Finished this year being true and Type set to Book, and have it show Count.

Check your plan before you build it. Notion's charts help says "Members on the Free Plan can try one chart for free", paid plans get unlimited charts, and on Free "you can delete your one free chart to create and use another". If your one chart already does something else, filter a table view to Finished this year and use the calculation row at the bottom of the table to count the rows. I'd add the formula even if you only ever use one of these, because the chart, the table count and any later view can all filter on the same property.

A count isn't a goal. For a reading target with a progress percentage and a pace check against its date, the Notion goal tracker build covers the full setup.

Keep a reading journal inside each book

I'd keep notes in each book's own page rather than a separate Notes database: one click on a Shelf card opens the cover, the progress and everything you wrote about that book. A database template makes that page the same every time.

1. Click the dropdown arrow next to New at the top right of the Library, then select + New template.
2. Title it Book notes. Notion's database templates help says whatever you title this page "will be the name of the template you use going forward".
3. Set Type to Book and Status to Want to read in the template's properties.
4. In the body, add four headings: Why I picked it, Key ideas, Quotes, What I'll do with it. Put each quote in a quote block or a callout, with its page number.

Make a second template called Article, with Type set to Article and a single One-line summary heading, for clipped pages and podcast episodes. Templates are "only available in the specific database where you created them", and on limits the help says "You can make as many as you want." To stop choosing a template every time, open the dropdown next to New, click the ••• to the right of Book notes and select Set as default; the release notes say you can then "choose whether the default should only apply to the current view, or the entire database". I'd make Book notes the default for the Shelf view and Article the default for Articles & podcasts, so each tab starts the right kind of page.

Save articles and Kindle highlights

Web Clipper: clip straight into Library

Notion's desktop Web Clipper is "a browser extension available for Chrome and Safari". Click the Notion icon to the right of the browser search bar, and pick Library in the Add to menu. An existing database "might not be included in the default list. You can search for it!", the help adds, so search for Library rather than clicking + New links database, which would start a second database. Press Save page.

When you clip into a database, "a URL property will automatically be added to capture the address of the original page (even if there wasn't one before)", and the reading list guide adds that the clipper "collects all the text and images from the webpage". Properties come after the clip: the help says you'll "need to open the clipped page in a Notion database to add and edit any tags or other database properties". So set Type to Article, Podcast or Video after you clip, or the page won't appear in the Articles & podcasts view. On a phone, the clipper uses the share sheet, and you need iOS 13.0 or above on iPhone or iPad, or Android 7.0 or above.

Readwise: keep its table, relate it to Library

If you already collect Kindle highlights in Readwise, its Notion export creates a new table called Readwise in a private page of your workspace, split by default into filtered views of Book, Article, Tweet and Podcast pages. You can add as many properties as you like, and they "will not be overwritten by Readwise in subsequent syncs"; you can even rename the default ones. The hard rule: "be careful not to delete or change the property type for any of the default properties, or the sync will break."

That rule is why I'd keep the Readwise table as its own database instead of merging it into Library: you'd have to carry its default properties in Library anyway. In the Readwise table, add a Relation property that points at Library, and each highlights page links to its book. Notion's relations help says you can "toggle on a corresponding relation in the destination database", so the book's page lists its highlights too.

You can move the whole Readwise table, and "the Readwise integration will still find and properly update" it. Moving a single page needs one step first: give the Readwise integration access to the new location, from the ... menu at the top right of the destination page, then Connections, Connect to, and a search for Readwise. Services such as Amazon Kindle and Instapaper "only synchronize with Readwise a few times a day", so a fresh highlight can take a while to appear; Readwise offers a manual resync on its Import Highlights page.

Problems and fixes

Duplicate a template or build your own?

Duplicate Notion's Reading list if your list mixes books with articles and podcasts, or one of the most-reviewed book trackers if you want a finished look from the start, then run the quick check above. If the template fails two of the five questions, build the Library yourself. Every listing in this set is free, so price never has to make the call.

Where to start

Make the Library database, add the five books on your nightstand, and set the Shelf gallery to Page cover with Fit image on. Then fill in Pages and Pages read for the book you're reading now and let the formula draw its bar. After that, in this order:

• Add the Book notes template and make it the Shelf's default.
• Add Finished this year and one Number chart, or the table count if your free chart is taken.
• Point the Web Clipper at Library, and if you use Readwise, relate its table to Library rather than merging the two.

Notion does the arithmetic for progress and the year's count. Deciding what counts as Abandoned, and which books earn a full page of notes, stays with you.

Questions about Notion reading lists

Can Notion fill in book details or covers automatically?

Notion's help pages describe no built-in book lookup, so title, author, page count and cover are what you enter. Some marketplace templates mention their own book-search add-ons. Check what an add-on connects to, and what access it asks for, before you sign in to it.

Can I share my reading list publicly?

Yes. You can publish the page that holds your Library as a public site, and the guide to publishing a Notion website covers the steps and the privacy checks to run before you share the link.