Mark LaFlamme at the Lewiston Sun Journal isn’t so sure if he still needs notebooks, but you’ll find his musings on the topic quite hilarious! The humble reporter’s notebook, slim enough to slide into a back pocket, used to be my best friend. My partner in crime. My lover. OK, maybe not my lover. That … Continue reading “Who Needs a Ratty Old Notebook?”
What a cool thing: The Exercise Book Archive is a website that is preserving exercise books, otherwise known as children’s school notebooks, from around the world and over hundreds of years! You can click on each notebook and see larger images of the cover and interior. Here’s the pink one from 1980s China in the … Continue reading The Exercise Book Archive
Shaunta Grimes at The Every Day Novelist has some interesting posts about notebooking. This one was particularly appealing to me: 10 Books That Will Make You Want to Keep a Notebook I was familiar already with a couple of the notebooking books she recommends. Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a classic, and contains the … Continue reading Books to Inspire Notebooking
A reader tipped me off to what looks like a really interesting book: In this richly illustrated book, readers will for the first time experience the diaries David Sedaris has kept for nearly 40 years in the elaborate, three-dimensional, collaged style of the originals. A celebration of the unexpected in the everyday, the beautiful and … Continue reading David Sedaris’s Diaries
An interesting item from the New York Times: (Some of) the Many Ways Times Journalists Take Notes If news reports make up the first draft of history, a reporter’s notebook is where that draft begins. Whether it’s an iconic quote scribbled in a notepad or a detailed scene describing a moment in time, the notes that … Continue reading How Reporters Take Notes
I loved these images of Octavia Butler’s notebook, with her affirmations about becoming a successful writer. (She eventually did.) The post at Black Cardigan Edit where I found these also shows off some notebook pages by Sylvia Plath and Frida Kahlo! Other posts about writers’ notebooks Other posts about artists notebooks and sketchbooks
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
Our latest notebook addict of the week is Vanessa Berry, an Australian writer and artist. In a 2012 blog post, she talks about her collection of 31 diaries, written starting in 1998. The photo of the whole collection is striking: The close-ups of the individual notebooks are also fascinating. She mostly uses old notebooks found … Continue reading Notebook Addict of the Week: Vanessa Berry
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 recently read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and was struck by this passage in the biographical note about the author, Muriel Spark: I had not heard of James Thin, but sadly, when I looked them up, it turns out that this long-standing bookseller, stationer and publisher no longer exists, and their Edinburgh shop … Continue reading Muriel Spark’s Notebooks
