An online commonplace book
“Your father’s zeal for books will be one of the last desires which will quit him.” Abigail observed to John Quincy in the spring of 1816, as Adams eagerly embarked on a sixteen volume of French history.
Keep it zeal.
McCullough, David. John Adams. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 620
Newton observed that if others would think as hard as he did, then they would be able to do the same things. Edison said genius was 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. It is hard work, applied for long years, which leads to the creative act, and it is rarely just handed to you without any serious effort on your part. Yes, sometimes it just happens, and then it is pure luck. It seems to me to be folly for you to depend solely on luck for the outcome of this one life you have to lead.
– Richard Hamming
As read from the transcript You and Your Research.
H/T Gwern
Bath, inspiration in; Bible, knowledge of; critical spirit; Edwardian; emotion at war with intellect; family feeling; fearlessness; foreign travel, distrust of; games, love of inventing rules for; generosity; honesty; intellectual severity; love, need for; pipe speaking; poetry, love of; rhyming, skill at; speaking ability; temper, loss of; tender-heartedness; transport, passion for forms of (railways, trams, bicycles, motor-bikes); understatement, tendency to.
As read from Hermione Lee’s Penelope Fitzgerald, A Life
Writer Penelope Fitzgerald once wrote a biography on her father and his three brothers. Fathers and uncles aren’t the typical biographical portrait.
The structure of this index could be something to replicate. Quick notes on a new topic or city. Similar to Jack Kerouac’s sketches.
Lee, Hermione. Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life. United Kingdom, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014. pg10
His name was Nikola Tesla.
A gifted inventor, a creature of habit.
A lover of animals, a friend to humankind.
A child of the storm, a child of the light.
A human flash of lightning, far ahead of his time.
- Azadeh Westergaard
Picture books are underrated. Children’s books are underrated.
Westergaard, Azadeh. A Life Electric: The Story of Nikola Tesla. United Kingdom, Penguin Young Readers Group, 2021.
‘I have lived among the Gods.’
Harkness, Sarah. Literature for the People: How The Pioneering Macmillan Brothers Built a Publishing Powerhouse. United Kingdom, Pan Macmillan, 2024.
‘Few men of our time have made a better use of a fortune of which they were the architects, or have been less spoilt by prosperity.’
That from the introduction of Sarah Harkness’ tome on the Macmillan brothers. Two pages in and I’m hyped. That’s what an introduction should do, right? It should act as the book’s hypeman!
Book introductions are underrated.
Harkness, Sarah. Literature for the People: How The Pioneering Macmillan Brothers Built a Publishing Powerhouse. United Kingdom, Pan Macmillan, 2024.
Inspired by the vanishing subgenre of agricultural memo books, ornate pocket ledgers, and the simple, unassuming beauty of a well-crafted grocery list, the Draplin Design Co., Portland, Ore. – in conjunction with Cloudal Partners, Chicago, Ill. – brings you “FIELD NOTES‘ in hopes of offering “An honest memo book worth fillin’ up with GOOD INFORMATION.”
Wow. That is a long sentence.
This from the inside back cover of any Field Notes memo book.
Fun marketing that makes you feel like a ranch hand, lone-ranger, or early 19th century boxing correspondent.
“Good grief the bodies are piling up.”
“Good grief the bodies are piling up..” Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron. Directed by Kaku Arakawa, NHK, 2024.
(*translated from Japanese)
Best movie, documentary or otherwise I’ve watched this year. It lingers in the mind after each viewing.
There’s a Dante reference.
Miyazaki works at the same type of desk as the rest of his team.
COVID-19 is brisked over – Miyazaki kept working.
The field they keep next to the studio is for the neighborhood kids. It has an abandoned soccer goal on one end. At one point the grass finally grows in and Miyazaki overhears a group of kids playing sandlot baseball.
Realizing a dream doesn’t make the suffering go away. Miyazaki suffers over thousands of binned sketches.
The longer you live the more you experience the death of friends and colleagues.
This is inescapable.
It’s no coincidence that the world’s best writers tend to keep diaries. If you faithfully record your life in a journal, you’re writing everyday — and if you write every day, you become a better writer. David Sedaris has kept a diary for forty years. This means that if you’ve kept a diary for a year of your life or less, Sedaris is at least forty times better at writing than you are.
Prefaces and dust jacket copy are underrated.
Sedaris, David. Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002). United States, Little, Brown, 2017.
Floodlights and Goalposts 