A fun Washington Post article by Josephine Wolff (see also this post about her favorite notebooks), about the many books now available on various methods of journaling and how to use notebooks. I cannot stop buying books about how to write in notebooks. It’s not that I require instructions. I’ve been doing it for as … Continue reading Books About How to Use Notebooks
The end of the year is always a fun time to think about daily carry notebook choices– your current year diary or planner is looking nicely worn in, and you’re itching to start a new one! This year, I’m also getting close to needing to swap out my daily notebook/journal and daily carry sketchbook. Here’s … Continue reading Daily Carry Notebook: What I’m Using Now, and Next
It’s been more than 8 years since I reviewed a notebook from Letts! This classic English brand has been around even longer than that, though… since 1812, in fact! Letts claims to be the first publisher of “commercial diaries,” meaning a mass-produced calendar book combined with space to write and usually some business-related promotional info … Continue reading Letts Notebook Review
I’ve always had a soft spot for Quo Vadis products, ever since my college days when I used some of their vinyl-covered diaries to keep track of my classes and assignments. An updated version of the ones I used is still available! But Quo Vadis has kept up with the times and added new products … Continue reading Quo Vadis Life Journal Infinite Review
The diaries of Patricia Highsmith (author of many books, including Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and The Price of Salt, the basis for the movie Carol) are being released by her estate, for publication in a book. The diaries, which Liveright Publishing plans to release in the United States in 2021 as … Continue reading Patricia Highsmith’s Diaries
I thought I’d share a couple pictures of this year’s Nolty Gold vs. the new one that just arrived for 2020. It’s always fun to look at the current year’s beaten up, well-loved diary next to a brand new shiny one! My 2020 Nolty Gold feels even more luscious than the previous one– the 2019 … Continue reading Nolty Gold 2020 vs 2019
A very powerful article from the September 16, 2019 New Yorker magazine: My Terezin Diary, by Zuzana Justman. It’s a miracle that the diary and its author both survived the atrocities of the Nazi concentration camps. I kept the diary from December 8, 1943, until March 4, 1944—the first winter of the two years I … Continue reading Zuzana Justman’s TerezÃn Diary
Isn’t that just the best headline ever? It kills me that this story didn’t include a photo of the actual notebooks! It is a story that is, literally, as old as the hills, yet its history can be traced in just eight small notebooks. The accounts ledgers of Victorian bookkeepers in the upper Dales, meticulously … Continue reading “Old notebooks that open a window on lost world of Wensleydale cheese”
Japanese public broadcaster NHK has obtained documents showing that former Emperor Hirohito repeatedly felt sorry about World War II and tried, unsuccessfully, to express his feelings by using the word “remorse†in a 1952 speech. The records of conversations with Hirohito spanning several years were kept by Michiji Tajima, a top Imperial Household Agency official … Continue reading Post-War Japanese Notebooks Recording Hirohito’s Regrets
Yet another reason I’m dying to go to Japan! This library in central Tokyo is like no other. Instead of offering volumes ranging from the usual, it displays the decidedly unusual. How about a bittersweet story of unrequited love between two high school students, a man’s passion for job-hunting or someone’s fixation on a pop … Continue reading Techorui Toshoshitsu: A Library of Notebooks