This Little Bookie:
I have a thing for tiny little, beautiful books and have a half dozen floating around my house on any particular occassion. Several are just notebooks where I jot down ideas or can shove in my pocket if I’m late to a meeting. But the most important ones I group together on my night table, where I can see them first thing in the morning.
My sketchbook is a rather girly looking forearm-sized volume, with a picture of an angel on the front. My friend Emily gave it to me back in Austin where I took it to open mic poetry events and tried (sort of) to write my own verse. I also use it as a journal, because I left my old journal on an airplane some months back.
Since 1994, I’ve jotted down all the books I’ve read, all the movies I’ve watched and given a line or two of commentary on each. I used to keep them in a file on my harddrive but I found it too much like work and consequently didn’t do it very often. Now I buy little journals at bookstores (one for each media) and keep my notes in them.
The only explanation I have for this is the same reason I like writing letters on paper. I write all day long on a computer. I mostly associate it with writing for public consumption, my reviews, journalism, this weblog. The writing I do by hand is as intimate as a touch. It’s for one special someone or sometimes, just for me.