One of the (admittedly few) benefits of the lockdown earlier this year was that all the time at home really jumpstarted my reading. Without a daily commute, I find myself with blocks of unoccupied “extra” hours for the first time in years. I’ve tried to fill most of it with constructive activity like reading, a favorite pastime that I’ve neglected over the years as we’ve all been pushed increasingly online. It’s also given me the opportunity to address an issue that’s concerned me for some time: I feel like I don’t have a good system for organizing and retaining what I read, particularly nonfiction. This, to me, presents a real problem and a serious opportunity to put the pens and paper I love to actual use in real life. The solution is obvious - start a commonplace book - but with so many options out there for tracking and organizing information, both analogue and digital, where do you even begin?
What Is a Commonplace Book?
A commonplace book, in its most basic form, is a type of scrapbook in which you record quotations, passages, aphorisms, notes, and more from your reading. Think of it as your own personalized encyclopedia, curated from the books, articles, or whatever other inputs you process throughout the day. A commonplace book is distinct from a traditional journal in that you record information, as opposed to serving as a place for thoughts and reflections.
Commonplace books have been around since the Renaissance, use by writers and scholars from Isaac Newton to Mark Twain to Virginia Woolf. Originally, of course, commonplace books were actual books. Today, modern practitioners use everything from index cards organized in boxes to digital apps. I don’t plan to address the digital option - part of the reason why I’m drawn to the idea of a commonplace book is because I process and retain information much better when I write it down by hand. That really leaves me with two options: notecards and notebooks. While each has its own advantages in terms of ease of organization and indexing (notecards) and long-term durability (notebooks), it probably won’t surprise most readers to hear that I’m a notebook guy.
When I read, I typically take notes in the margins or in a pocket notebook, and if it’s a key passage I want to remember (or, going forward, record in my commonplace book), I’ll mark the passage with a Book Dart.
Why a Notebook?
Honestly? Mainly because I’m a creature of habit. I enjoy the act of writing in a notebook, I’ve become accustomed over the years to jotting stuff down on loosely indexed pages, and I’m not doing academic research or organizing large amounts of information for a longer writing project. If you fall into the latter category, you probably really want to consider index cards, or even a digital option, because it will make it much easier to track sources for attribution, etc. My own commonplace book will be for my personal enjoyment and to source material for the occasional blog post, so I can live with the inefficiencies.
One thing I love about Write Notepads’ new Classic Hardcover is that you can easily maintain a continuous matching set as you fill up notebooks, or separate your notes by subject matter using different colors.
More Importantly, Which Notebook?
The answer to this question is: whatever notebook you will use regularly. Find something that’s relatively portable, contains paper versatile enough to use with the full range of writing instruments you use in a typical day, and finally, isn’t so nice that you’ll be afraid to use it. Most importantly, choose something durable that will hold up over time. Personally, my notebook of choice is a Write Notepads Classic Hardcover Notebook (which, full disclosure, I sell in my shop). Not only does this casebound hardcover notebook contain high quality, versatile paper, but the cover will hold up to repeated perusing over the years, and the notebook stores nicely on a shelf. If you like to organize your reading notes into volumes by subject, as many people do, it’s easy to pick up a matching set of notebooks, and you can even use different colors to signify subject matter. Other great options to consider are the Baron Fig Confidant and the MOO Hardcover Notebook. But use whatever you want - I write here about my own personal preferences, and as I always say on this blog, the key is to find something that works for YOU.
I plan to track my commonplace book project moving forward, either on Instagram or here on the blog. In addition to writing out quotes and passages that I find meaningful to me, I may even incorporate clippings from articles or paper notes. I’ve been following with interest Brad’s visual journal project over at the Pen Addict, and I’ve got the glue sticks and Washi Tape. If only I could find decent pair of scissors….