I’ve been reading Orhan Pamuk’s fascinating book Istanbul: Memories and the City. It’s an interesting mix of city history and personal memoir, and here’s a passage I had to share: “My grandmother always kept with her a slim leather-bound notebook in which she wrote something every day. This notebook, in which she recorded bills, memories, … Continue reading A Turkish Grandmother’s Notebook
Here’s an interesting take on notebooks that I have to quote at length: I don’t like fancy journals. Hardbound is great for books, but when it comes to things I write in, spiral bound please. No fancy covers — though hard covers can be nice when you write on the road a lot. No fifty-dollar, … Continue reading “The Importance of Having a Crap Notebook”
Do you type up things you write in your notebooks? This week’s addict does, or at least tries to! But he hasn’t gotten through the entire backlog of this collection: A notebook first found its way into my pocket in 1995. I was a college freshman, a gumshoe at the college newspaper. One night at … Continue reading Notebook Addict of the Week: AntSaint
An amusing tidbit from a Salon post about Tao Lin, an up and coming writer described as “the next big thing in urban hipster lit.” Among his unusual marketing stunts are things like selling shares in the future profits from his novels, and putting odds and ends like drawings, notes and unpublished story drafts up … Continue reading Moleskine Monday: Tao Lin Sells His
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 … Continue reading The Manly Tradition of the Pocket Notebook
Now here’s a book many of us might like to read! Or write ourselves… From Old Notebooks is a memoir, a novel, a poem, an essay — a self-styled memoivel — which exemplifies how love of language and literature enriches our lives, and explores, often with great humor, the many pitfalls confronting a young writer and father … Continue reading Book: From Old Notebooks
From the Huffington Post: The thing about opening your mind up to a new story idea is that you once you do it, there’s no going back. All of a sudden, everything seems like it has to do with the new idea. Songs and lyrics and billboards and articles and movies and books and people … Continue reading “Little Notebooks Everywhere”
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 … Continue reading Notebook Addict of the Month: Paul
I’m coveting the latest book from poet Anne Carson, called “Nox”– it’s a beautiful slip-cased accordion fold-out, reproducing collaged journal pages she made in memory of her dead brother. Read more at Amazon: Nox
This week’s addict blogs at Wavy Lines and shares this photo of a stack of journals: I’ve kept diaries or journals ever since I learned to print words. Locked diaries were a favorite until my pre-teen years when I switched to the more mature journals. I have several fancy leather and hardcover journals (see pictures)Â that … Continue reading Notebook Addict of the Week: Laura Marcella