Here’s an interesting question from a reader named Jeff: I have a Roaring Spring notebook that was used as a journal by a family member, the contents are very precious to us but there’s some confusion as to the year(s) that the contents refer to! (The writer only used Month/Day annotations, no year.) Some family … Continue reading Roaring Spring Notebook from the 1980s?
Continuing to celebrate this blog’s 10th anniversary, here’s another blast from the past– the past of this blog, and my own past as a notebook addict! The post below is just one of many I’ve written about my own collection of notebooks saved from throughout my life. (See My Collection) The 1970s and 1980s ones … Continue reading Revisiting the Past: 1980s Roaring Spring Spiral Notebook (2009)
I had heard of Lee Lozano but didn’t really know much about her until reading this article in The Brooklyn Rail about the publication of her notebooks. I was inspired to purchase two volumes of the notebooks (Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 are available on Amazon) out of curiosity about their contents, and also because … Continue reading Lee Lozano’s Notebooks in Facsimile Editions
I used a few of these little planners when I was in college in the late 1980s. In the photo below, which includes some of my other planners from that time, you can see a black and brown Uncalendar, and the red one in the top left with a post-it on top is also an … Continue reading 1980s Uncalendar Planner
I absolutely loved this blog post– one man’s tale of developing the habit of writing in old diaries and journals, including original small-m moleskines, their modern brand name replacements, and the Boots Scribbling Diaries I mentioned in this post. Quoted at length, but please do check out the rest of the original blog post, by … Continue reading Moleskine Monday: Notebook Nostalgia
Here’s another old-time favorite of mine: These are pocket sized notebooks made by Boorum & Pease and Esselte in the 1980s, with lined pages and a textured black hard cover. I look at these now and see them as a sort of proto-Moleskine. I was always looking for a nice “little black book,” in a … Continue reading Boorum & Pease/Esselte Black Notebooks
A reader recently wrote to me with the following question: “I have been looking for a particular kind of notebook for quite some time. I see them more in movies than anything, and examples include JFK and the most recent Captain America movie (see pic below). It’s very similar to the one you have posted … Continue reading Boorum and Pease Brown Taped-Spine Notebook
This is just a small part of an article in which Paul Zahl talks about the movie Super 8: Recently I came across ten little notebooks, notebooks for a person’s breast pocket, which I used for my to-do lists during the Winter and Spring of 1972-1973. I was a recent college graduate and quite confused, … Continue reading Old Roaring Spring Notebooks
I love seeing artist’s notebooks, especially ones like this with notes about how the artist is working out an idea as opposed to just sketches. Below is a journal page by David Wojnarowicz, a controversial artist who died of AIDS in 1992. (If you want to learn more about him and the 1980s East Village … Continue reading David Wojnarowicz’s Journals
Here’s a few things I pulled out of one of my storage boxes, about half of which is filled with childhood notebooks from the late ’70s to mid-’80s. First, a small orange looseleaf notebook. I was probably in about 6th grade when I decided to devote it to Astronomy and colored the cover with a … Continue reading Random Notebooks from My Collection