Notebook Stories

This week’s addict got my attention through a post on the Notebook Stories Facebook page, where she linked to the first in a series of posts about her notebook collection: The series continues in these other notebook posts: Notebook Collection Part Two, Notebook Collection Part Three, and  Phases in the Life of a Notebook. The [...]

I wish this could have been me: I GOT a real thrill in December 1999 in the Reading Room of the Morgan Library in New York when the librarian, Sylvie Merian, brought me, after I had completed an application with a letter of reference and a photo ID, the first, oldest notebook of Isaac Newton. [...]

This sounds like a great book: Field Notes on Science and Nature Why are scientists’ field notebooks so valuable? And do notes really matter anymore, with global positioning systems, laptops and digital cameras available to document information traditionally recorded through sketches and barely legible scrawl? In “Field Notes on Science and Nature,” edited by Michael [...]

Jessa sent me an email with this great notebook story: I teach 6th grade Science at a Friends School in Philadelphia and I base a large percentage of my curriculum around the notion of observing, recording, and taking pride in a scientific sketchbook. My students still take notes in a traditional binder, but for each [...]

Here’s an exhibit I plan on checking out in the near future: “The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives,” at the Morgan Library in New York. The exhibit includes these lovely items: A diary jointly kept by Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne: John Ruskin’s chess diary: You can see more images in [...]

Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician, who is quite famous if you’re into math, I guess, though his name would have meant nothing to me if I hadn’t read David Leavitt’s novel The Indian Clerk, which tells a fictionalized version of Ramanujan’s time at Cambridge University. Although I’m sure I wouldn’t understand the least bit [...]

I featured Kolby Kirk’s hiking journals here a while ago, but more recently, I came across a post on another blog of his, talking about his first journal. I love how he explored his interests in a variety of topics in these wonderful sketches: The journal itself is pretty neat– a spiral bound sketchbook onto [...]

The Art of Manliness blog muses on the long tradition of keeping a notebook: The idea of carrying around a pocket notebook has become quite popular these last few years, revived by the introduction of the current incarnation of the “Moleskine” into the market. It’s become so popular that I’m afraid it has come to [...]

Here’s something that struck me as unusual: a top-opening lab notebook. It looks a bit like the Book Company lab notebook I reviewed, but that was side opening, as is every other lab notebook I’ve seen. Also, this one is different in that the pages are printed on only one side, which might appeal to [...]

This week’s addict had to be upgraded to Addict of the Month. Paul has been a faithful reader and correspondent for quite a while now, sharing not only photos of his own notebooks, but links to historical notebooks and other interesting trivia. Did you know, for instance, that the last entry in Samuel Pepys’ diary [...]