Notebook Stories

Here’s something very cool from the British Library, which I noticed my friend at notizbuchblog.de posted about recently. On the library’s website, you can look through some wonderful old books, including priceless items like the poet and artist William Blake’s notebook below:

See more at Virtual books: images only – The Notebook of William Blake: Introduction.
They [...]

Thanks to a tip from a reader, I found this nice little post by Macy Halford, at the New Yorker’s publishing blog, The Book Bench:
Not too tall, not too short, not too fat, not too thin, not too flimsy or with too stiff a spine. And most of all, not with lines too far apart.
These [...]

The story below is the kind of thing I wish would happen to me… it’s from a book called A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters, which, amusingly enough, turns out to be written by the father of Dan Ackroyd:
Judy and I pried open the rusted metal clasp with [...]

Too bad this event already happened! I wonder what kind of notebook that is in the picture…

Julius Singer Press and Awkward Press team up to present “Old Notebooks,” an evening of readings by authors Sara Jaffe (The Art of Touring), Chris Leo (Feathers Like Leather), Zack Lipez (No Seats On The Party Car) and Jason [...]

Here’s a quote from one of the best books I’ve read recently, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery.
We went on to discuss the definition of intelligence and he asked me if he could write down my formula in his moleskine notebook: “It is not a sacred gift, it is a primate’s only weapon.”
That [...]

Here’s a notebook belonging to the Irish writer Colm Toibin, whose latest novel, “Brooklyn,” has just been published:

He wrote “Brooklyn” while teaching at Stanford, and this spring, in little more than a month, he turned out two book reviews and a 10,000-word short story, the first thing he has written on a computer. He usually [...]

I like the look of this forthcoming book! What a beautiful cover.
The Blue Notebook is not available until July 2009, but here’s a teaser:
An unforgettable, deeply affecting tribute to the powers of imagination and the resilience of childhood, The Blue Notebook tells the story of Batuk, a precocious 15-year-old girl from rural India who [...]

I was in a store recently where a book called The Wednesday Sisters was a staff pick. I was struck by the cover image, which features a diary and a fountain pen. There is always something so nice about the look of handwritten words on a page…

Found at Archives Tragic:
…she describes her life-long diary and note-keeping habits, and the shelves of “battered old notebooks stuffed with inconsequential factoids” that have accumulated as a result. She never opens the notebooks once they are finished, but can’t bring herself to destroy them either.
From a review of The Feel of Steel, by Helen Garner.

[...]