I obsessively read my book all weekend. And it’s done. I did not expect to finish it since it had a lot of pages still to go on Friday night. But, it was a great book, so putting it down was hard. And the pages flew by.
This is unusual for a non-fiction book.
The book that held my attention all week was “The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper”.
The different chapters in the book were about all the different ways humans have used notebooks to live their lives with more comfort, or for pleasure, or for making sense of their lives. The chapters also move chronologically from antiquity to modern times: All the way from wax tablets to bullet journals. They are short and to the point.
The stories the author tells us about the characters who played a big role in different ways of notebook keeping are interesting and eye-opening. For me they made the history I already know a little more multifaceted and rich. And for the history that I did not know, well, now I do, all through the lens of people having a way of journaling information about some aspect of their lives or their society.
The book is, of course, very inspiring. I was immediately thinking of my own notes keeping. My sketchbooks, my daily planner, my exercise log, my digital lists etc. But there is something beautiful about having a little companion of a book to note down interesting things one learns, or events that happen to them or around them.
They add to the story of our lives. They make us mulitfaceted. They give meaning to our days when we look back a number of years later. They make us interesting people with a rich inner lives who contemplate about things that they encounter.
From diaries of Leonardo Da Vince, to all of us Morning Page writers, and daily planners. The notebooks we document different aspects of our lives are our legacy, a proof that we are here. And humans are nothing but aspiring legacy leavers- yes Pyramids of Giza, I am thinking of you!
I do have a little notebook that I usually bring with me. But do I whip it out at every interesting, or aha moment of my life to jot down my thoughts or copy a line…well, not yet, but this book did inspire me to start doing so from now on.
And being a human, who also thinks of artifacts of life, my immediate thoughts were also about what kind of notebook would I like to carry around with me- size, shape, lined or plain pages…all the choices that capitalism affords us.
Till I remembered I am in my No-Buy zone. Which means I will find my notebooks from my own stash at home…use what I already have. And make my life richer- metaphorically, and financially 🙂