Nanami Paper‘s fountain pen friendly Tomoe River paper notebooks seem to be very popular. But I kind of wrote them off because they only seemed to sell larger A5-ish sizes rather than the pocket size I prefer. However, I recently took another look and was glad to see there are a few options that might … Continue reading Pocket Size Notebooks and Planners from Nanami Paper
Here’s another shoebox tour! This box of notebooks, one of the many that hold my collection, contains lined and dot-grid notebooks that I may find a use for someday, or at least like enough to want to keep. As with the previous shoebox tour, I first just looked at the box without taking any of … Continue reading Shoebox Tour: A Box of Dot-Grid and Lined Notebooks
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”
I love this collection of notebooks, which have been used to record hundreds or even thousands of haiku. (The original post at Notebookers.jp is in Japanese, so I am relying on Google translate.) I don’t know much about Japanese writing and only know the most basic structure of haiku, but short poems with this kind … Continue reading Haiku Notebooks
I must have missed this Brainpickings article when it was originally published in 2014, but I’m glad I discovered it via Pinterest! Artist John Vernon Lord created amazing illustrations to accompany James Joyce‘s Finnegans Wake in a collectible edition published by the Folio Society (now out of stock, alas). The illustrations are stunning, but of … Continue reading John Vernon Lord’s Notebooks
If you read my recent post about Moleskine’s pocket size sketchbook being discontinued and are freaking out, here’s a slight silver lining to the cloud: Moleskine.com seems to be clearing out their stock with a 50% off sale right now. I would be buying a few myself, except that I already bought a few on … Continue reading Moleskine Pocket Sketchbooks 50% off
The National Library in Jerusalem, Israel has just revealed to the public for the first time a collection of Franz Kafka’s papers, including some notebooks. The writings themselves have been published before, but without access to the original papers, people couldn’t see how he wrote, and doodled and sketched, as in the example below! Trove … Continue reading Franz Kafka’s Notebook
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
Another sighting of an interesting notebook, this time in the movie Widows. I won’t get into any plot details that might be spoilers, but here’s a couple screen shots of the notebook. It looks to be approximately 5 x 8″, a nicely broken-in leather cover containing a squared notebook. It seems quite thick, but there … Continue reading Notebook in “Widows”