Notebooks Everywhere
Tracking Monday to Friday
From a writer just outside the path of Beryl, here’s what shook out this week.
(Just here for the notebooks part? Skip down to the Tuesday section.)
Monday
Couple music notes started the week.
Popping up in the workout playlist was “Sean,” a track from the Trophy Eyes album Suicide and Sunshine. Astonishing vocal performance from John Floreani. Haunting. Repeat listens. ‘Nuff said.
And listen to this if you need something relaxing. Parijat delivers a strong showing with 2024’s Simplicity of Heart which I first mentioned last week. Calming and shimmering classical guitar. The album finishes in absolutely inspired fashion with the track “Wishing You Well.” Four stars.
OK, on to a picture book idea. This one’s inspired by the placeholder text you sometimes see for fake addresses (e.g. “Anytown, U.S.A.” or “123 Anystreet, Canada”). The book follows the adventures of "Anykid the Great,” who powers up on yummy anyfood and sojourns to a far-off Anyland with his trusty Anydog by his side, making a series of anyfriends along the way. Anything could happen? Feel free to use.
At the intersection of humour and technical writing is How to Sharpen Pencils by David Rees. I recalled Rees’ weird and amusing book after coming across a pristine manual pencil sharpener on the fourth floor of a capital city library. The photo I took is now up on Imgur. By the way, the subtitle to the Rees book is: A practical and theoretical treatise on the artisanal craft of pencil sharpening. Lol.
Tonight’s tea tag quote: “What a desolate place would be a world without a flower—Clara Lucas Balfour”
What’s a tea tag quote? See an example here.
Tuesday
Notebooks everywhere? Yep, if you want to capture more of your own ideas. That’s according to the sometimes insightful Dickie Bush via Twitter/X. A writing tips thread Bush served up last year just resurfaced in my bookmarks. Bush has recommended Leuchturm1917 notebooks in other tweets.
Staying with notebooks here, I’m a fan of what Peter Pauper Press is up to product-wise. Is anyone else seeing these notebooks? Latest discovery for me is the Lindisfarne Journal from the White Plains-based company. The cover reproduces faithfully a page from an illuminated manuscript by Bishop Eadfrith of Lindisfarne, circa the year 700. No one else in the notebook space is doing this type of thing rn.
Meanwhile, the posthumous Alice Munro revelations have blown up to the point where the story seems everywhere right now. Reaction coming in from Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Zoe Whittall. Also Sweater Weather and so many others on Substack. A response that weirdly sticks out for me amid all the coverage is the X user who posted a photo of all her Munro books thrown in the garbage, with the comment, “As a mother, I can’t even…”
Tonight’s tea tag quote: “Bring me the sunset in a cup—Emily Dickinson.”
Wednesday
QR codes above the fold? Seeing these on the print editions of daily newspapers. Makes for a physical and digital—or physidigital—experience. That hyperlink goes to the earliest instance of the word I could find on the internet.
Choose optimism, says Janis Ozolins. His latest “ideas newsletter” sat in my inbox a few days but I finally opened it up. The way Ozolins explains ideas visually, on Instagram and elsewhere, and his occassional doses of inspo make it worth subscribing to the guy. He’s currently using Convertkit instead of Substack to reach his list.
Meanwhile, MadeInCanada says it’s time to put Terry Fox on the $5 bill. The mavens of pop culture north of 49 even showcased mockups of the would-be notes on X this week. But you wonder what the Royal Canadian Mint is up to when we still haven’t even seen Charles on a $20-sheet and it’s mid July.
Tonight’s tea tag quote: “Beauty isn’t caused. It is.—Emily Dickinson.”
Thursday
What’s the significance of a corporate name? When I buy from Amazon, Intelcom is usually the courier that shuttles the purchase to my door. An email in my inbox today (your package has been delivered!) included a link to a page all about Intelcom’s upcoming name change. Outside of Quebec, the company won’t be known as Intelcom anymore. It’ll be called…Dragonfly.
And how about nine decades in one house? Spending time on a university campus this summer has sparked a curiosity about the historic buildings of the place. Juxtaposed among the multi-storey brown-brick structures of the institution is the Neville Homestead built in 1873. Hard to believe what we read on a special collections page about the house: a man named Fred Neville lived in it for 91 years.
Once again, Emily Dickinson figures in tonight’s tea tag quote. “How strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!” (Exclamation point hers.)
Friday
This next one’s a bit colourful and it came across my desk this week. Put this in the category of quirky factoids of the CanLit space. The book cover colour of This Is a Stickup by Amber McMillan is, well, amber. To a T. Do we have another example anywhere in the corpus of English letters where the colour used for the book aesthetic exactly matches the author’s name? Clever work by the designer at publisher Wolsak & Wynn.
Over at Backyard History, a new article about Samuel de Champlain's encounter in the 1600s with the GouGou monster on Miscou Island. My initial take (based mostly on the image accompanying the article) was that the stories told by the Mi’kmaq indicated a possible descendant of the prehistoric mosasaurus. The body of the article however makes it clear GouGou was believed to be a land creature, not a sea monster.
Saturday
The calendar on the wall tells me today is the start of the moon’s First Quarter. Proceed accordingly, friends.
***
And that’s the way I saw things over the past weeklong span of days.