I Feel A Purchase Is Just Around The Corner

The article I read the other day that mentioned the new Scott Turow novel also lamented the lack of good fiction on the bookshelves lately. Other than the latest Harry Potter installment, the reviewer didn't see many good prospects for the Best Fiction Book of 2005.

However, the author of the review also mentioned a new book by Joan Didion that is to hit the bookshelves later this year.

I'm not wholly familiar with Didion's writings, but it did bring to mind an essay of hers I read for a college course I took over ten years ago. It's entitled "On Keeping A Notebook". She wrote that since she was a child, she'd carry paper and pen with her to jot down random thoughts, musings, quotes, and whatever else crossed her mind she was likely to forget.

I used to do that, as well. For some reason, I stopped, only to pick it up again recently.

Except I don't have anything as formal as a notebook. The other night, it was an old envelope. Today in the car, it was the business section of the newspaper. Maybe I need to invest in something more formal.

I must've liked this class because it's the only non political science or history book I kept from all my courses. Upon re-reading Didion's essay, I noticed that I had highlighted and underlined certain passages. I must've really liked this class.

I don't remember much of the course per se, but I do remember the teacher. I recall a story she told us the first day of classes; a story from when she was in elementary school. Her class had to read a book and turn in a report of that book. I don't remember which book she read, but it was something way above her reading level at the time. The teacher failed her, thinking there was no way she read, much less understood, the book. I remember the sassy look she got on her face while finishing the story saying, "And I'm still reading books way above my reading level."

Looking at what I found important more than a decade ago, I found I can still indentify with the passages I marked for posterity:

Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook after all?

Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant malcontents, children afflicted at birth with some presentiment of loss.

Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point. (That one was underlined and highlighted).

It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about.

Yes, that is exactly what notebooks (and blogs, as well?) are all about. Keeping in touch with others; but more important, keeping in touch with yourself. Remembering what it was to be you.