Common books aren't common enough, anymore.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post
Common books used to be the norm, books people carried with them to jot down thoughts, notes of interest, lists, addresses, anything and everything. Sure, we have dayplanners and diaries and journals and Blackberries, but it just isn't the same.
I keep a common book. I always have one in my purse or backpack. When its full, I set it on the shelf and pull down another one to begin again. I fill it with snippets of my own terrible poetry, thoughts I have, ideas for future writing, notes from lectures or sermons I've been in, collections of poetry or quotes I hear and see that I think I might want to read again, lists of things I need to remember to do in the future, phone numbers, books I see or hear about that I want to read someday - it's all there, and the haphazard arrangement of having it all in one book instead of split into a book for planning, a book for personal notations, a book for addresses, and so on, makes it that much more rewarding to go back through. Part of the inspiration from the books is not so much the actual content, but the contrasts between the content. A page with a poem facing a page with a little sketch of a dog and a comment I heard at the coffee shop create their own meaning.
Frankly, I can't live without my common book because I always have so many thoughts running through my head that if I didn't write them down and free up space for new thoughts, I'd go crazy. In fact, when I buy a new purse, it has to pass the "book" test, meaning it it's too small to carry a book to write in, it just won't work. My common book is a source of great relief when I'm using it and a source of both entertainment and inspiration when I look back through it.
Common books should be more common.
My grandmother's common book, shown in the image in this post, was a little different. Back then, there wasn't the over-abundance of blank journals to fit every need and taste, so she took an old horticulture book that she no longer wanted and began filling it with notes, sketches, newspaper clippings, postcards and photos. She glued or wrote the entire collection right over the top of the original book.
Part of what drives me nuts with the modern scrapbooking craze is the newness, the overly artsy planned coordination of products and motifs that say that the only thing that a scrapbook should be is archival and standard and it should only be filled with pre-labeled acceptable scrapbook stuff. Baloney. Go for the common book idea, or how my grandmother handled it. If you see something or think of something or hear something that interests you, throw it in your book, archival or not. The end result of my grandmother's efforts lasted beyond her life, archival or not, and is a heck of a lot more unique and fun to look through than some of what passes for scrapbooks and journals today.
Are you challenged to try your hand at starting your own common book? Check out the March 8 issue of The Lone Prairie Sometimer (on the "freebies" page, scroll down) for some ideas to get you started.
Common Book Links:
The Common Book
Online "common-place book": Common-Place
Labels: books
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 3/08/2006 01:53:00 PM
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2 Comments:
The scrapbooking comment? What a relief to hear someone say it.
Still, I fantasize about hiring someone to paste all my clippings into some book. Which are in various and sundry parts of my closets, or under my bed. But these are different (sometimes) than the places I write. I guess I put the newspaper clippings and ticket stubs in my journal, such as it is, but my strict writing is in a book of its own. Both are too cumbersome to carry around. Is a hand-held recorder too stupid? Or am I just to cheap and lazy to buy one.
By 
girlfriday, at
March 12, 2006 1:17 AM
I use a common book for everything. I love it. I do all that you mentioned in your post and more. I'm just about to fill one up so I've been using it exclusively for sermon and study notes and started breaking a new one (my first Moleskin) in. I like the moleskin but it doesn't have a convenient place to hide the pen so we'll see how that works out.
By 
Joe Martino, at
July 31, 2007 8:00 AM
