I recently noticed this story about Siegfried Sassoon’s notebooks being archived at Cambridge University. Sassoon was a poet who refused to return to fight after being wounded in World War I. (Read Pat Barker’s novel Regeneration for an interesting perspective on his story.) The archive contains, among other things “Sassoon’s journals [and]Â pocket notebooks compiled … Continue reading Siegfried Sassoon’s Notebooks→
Here’s someone who is a notebook addict and a bit of a philosopher too, it seems. Many of the notebooks seem to be the red and black ones made in China and sold in stores such as Pearl River Mart in NYC. I have one in my collection that was bought in Boston’s Chinatown many … Continue reading Notebook Addict of the Week: Jack Haas→
Here’s a notebook addict who used her collection to accomplish something amazing: A Wisconsin teenager named Cayla Kluver kept notebooks, lots of them. These colorful spiral notebooks are the kind you get at the local pharmacy or supermarket. Nothing fancy, but the perfect canvas for personalizing, or maybe writing a narrative. On those pages, Cayla … Continue reading Notebook Addict of the Week: A Teenage Novelist→
This week’s notebook addict blogs about history at Patriots and Peoples. He says: A bit more than twenty years ago I started carrying a spiral notebook with me almost constantly. I usually wrote in it while reading—taking notes, jotting titles and authors of other texts that I planned to examine, proposing theses, writing initial drafts … Continue reading Notebook Addict of the Week: Patriots and Peoples→
Or do you write because you like notebooks? “Girl with A Notebook” ponders the question “How has writing affected your life?” One of the seemingly obvious answers would be that I spend a lot more time alone since I’ve started writing, preferring the company of my keyboard to the company of my classmates… or did … Continue reading Do You Like Notebooks Because You Write?→
A thought-provoking quote from Mark Twain: It is a troublesome thing for a lazy man to take notes, so I used to try in my young days to pack my impressions in my head. But that can’t be done satisfactorily, so I went from that to another stage– that of making notes in a note-book. … Continue reading Mark Twain’s Notebooks→
Maybe someday I’ll be able to interview some celebrities about how they use a notebook! I caught this mention of notebooks in an article about the singer Ne-Yo: How do you relax? Writing, not necessarily writing a song, just writing in general. I have little notebooks that I carry around with me; some of them … Continue reading Ne-Yo’s Notebooks→
At From the Living Room, some musings on “My Notebook“: It used to be that my notebook was the most important thing in my handbag. It used to be that I would get through a notebook in a matter of months. I have a box full of used notebooks, each with the date they were … Continue reading Changes in How We Use Notebooks→
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 … Continue reading “Old Notebooks Stuffed With Inconsequential Factoids”→
Andrew Motion, the poet laureate of Britain, was interviewed recently and I noticed this remark: My notebooks are Ordning & Reda from Selfridges — blank pages for poetry, lined for prose. I’d never heard of Ordning & Reda so I had to investigate, of course! Here’s their website: www.ordning-reda.com. Now is it just me or … Continue reading Andrew Motion’s Notebooks→
Notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, diaries: in search of the perfect page…