There were a couple of interesting notebook-related items in yesterday’s New York Times:
Investigators looking into Balkan War crimes are still finding evidence— the police raided the Belgrade home of the former Bosnian Serb military leader and found, among other things hidden inside the house’s walls, “18 notebooks of General Mladic’s wartime military diaries.”
And on a lighter note, dream journals don’t have to be private. Lots of people are starting dream discussion groups where they share and analyze each other’s dreams:
I am a notebook junkie. I love notebooks and sketchbooks. This is a small selection of what I own — it doesn’t include work notebooks, notebooks in other places in the house, or notebooks on the other shelf. Or really old notebooks.
Well, I think she should take some pictures of all those other ones!
I recently got an email from an Austrian designer named Konstantin Schmölzer, who asked me to take a look at his concept for a notebook. His idea is very cool: a notebook with multiple bookmarks that can link from an index page to anywhere in the notebook. Here’s an image of one of his prototypes:
This particular notebook wouldn’t necessarily work for everyone– the “steps” in the spine and the unusual paper could be a problem, and I worried that the loops of the bookmarks sticking out could snag on something if you tried to carry it in a bag. But I still think it’s a great concept and a beautiful prototype. (Love that grey flannel look to the cover.)
You can see other versions of the notebook at his website: Konstantin Schmölzer | Gedankensprung (see the different “editions” via the tabs). I hope he is soon able to produce a version of these notebooks for sale! Thanks again to Konstantin for letting us all have a sneak peek of his work in progress.
This is old store stock from a now defunct shop, and is in BEAUTIFUL CONDITION! Each pad has 60 sheets, and measures 6″ x 9″ – the perfect size for all of your stenographic needs! And that cover art is just TOO MUCH!
Alicia Silverstone, the actress who starred in Clueless, has been in the news more recently because of her activism on behalf of environmental causes and her bestselling book The Kind Diet. But she still finds the time to keep a journal:
Now, I will admit, I’m still old-school in the fact that I appreciate the hand-written note and keeping a journal. But I always use products that are made from recycled paper! Like these notebooks and journals from Paperwink that are made from 100% recycled paper. They are just so pretty!
Did you know that each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution!
Laser, Amber and Deonna are the winners of this week’s giveaway. I’ll be emailing you to get your address!
Thanks to everyone else who gave it a shot, and don’t worry, we’ll have more giveaways soon!
This week’s Notebook Addict is writer Martin Wilson, author of What They Always Tell Us. Below are a few that he’s using right now:
These include Moleskine, Clairefontaine, and SemiKolon, as well as a new one to me, the “Pearl Pinstripe.” (I guess he must mean these Carolina Pad Pearl Stripe notebooks? He does say they’re “kind of girly!”)
He notes:
In this digital age, where everything is stored on a computer’s hard drive or in an iPhone or Blackberry, I still cling to an obsession I’ve had from a young age: notebooks. Slabs of paper bound between two covers. Sure, my address book is on my computer now, and I do keep a journal as a Microsoft Word document. I don’t write any of my fiction in long hand. But despite these modern flourishes, I refuse to surrender my love for good old-fashioned old-school notebooks.
I probably have over 30 notebooks that I haven’t even written in. New York, in particular, is a notebook lover’s paradise, because there are stationery shops on countless blocks. I often can’t resists stepping inside to peruse the goods. If I see one that I like, for whatever reason, I snap it up even if I don’t know what I will use it for. I’ll have a use for it one day, right?
Read more at Martin Wilson Writes » Blog Archive » My Obsession with Notebooks.
Just for the heck of it, I’m going to give away 3 totally random notebooks today, to 3 random people selected from comments on this post, which must complete the sentence “The best notebook I ever had was….”
No particular brand is being offered, I’m just going to pick a few from my stash and give away one notebook each to the 3 lucky winners. So if you like notebooks and surprises, leave a comment on this post completing the sentence “The best notebook I ever had was….” to enter. The deadline for entry is 11:59PM EST tonight.
I wasn’t familiar with David Mitchell’s books, but there was an interesting article about him in this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine:
Since the appearance of his debut novel, “Ghostwritten,†in 1999 — a fifth, “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,†is being published this week — Mitchell’s writing has been compared with that of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Twain, Sterne, Joyce, Nabokov, Pynchon, Salinger, Chandler, DeLillo, Murakami, William Gibson and Ursula K. LeGuin — a baker’s dozen that begins to suggest both the heights of hyperbole scaled by Mitchell’s admirers and the Hydra-headed nature of his novelistic output. Mitchell’s novels have featured a global and historical sweep unusual for writers of his generation.They are set everywhere from contemporary Japan and London to the 19th-century South Seas to California in the 1970s to dystopic distant futures — sometimes all in the same novel.
I definitely want to check out his books now (especially The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which just got a great review from Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times), but what I’d really like to see are his notebooks, from which these images are taken:
Notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, diaries: in search of the perfect page…
, has been in the news more recently because of her activism on behalf of environmental causes and her bestselling book 
. But she still finds the time to keep a journal:
. Below are a few that he’s using right now:
? He does say they’re “kind of girly!”)
, but there was an 
,†in 1999 — a fifth, “
,†is being published this week — Mitchell’s writing has been compared with that of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Twain, Sterne, Joyce, Nabokov, Pynchon, Salinger, Chandler, DeLillo, Murakami, William Gibson and Ursula K. LeGuin — a baker’s dozen that begins to suggest both the heights of hyperbole scaled by Mitchell’s admirers and the Hydra-headed nature of his novelistic output. Mitchell’s novels have featured a global and historical sweep unusual for writers of his generation.They are set everywhere from contemporary Japan and London to the 19th-century South Seas to California in the 1970s to dystopic distant futures — sometimes all in the same novel.
