I love office supplies. Sometimes my husband and I will browse Office Depot for no reason at all. Whenever we’re at a store I have to walk down the stationery aisle, just to look. But while I am fascinated by pens and paper shredders and industrial-strength staplers, my true love is notebooks. Notebooks, journals, planners, diaries – call them what you like, but I have a real love for bound writing spaces. I’ve kept a diary since 1991; I drag beat-up old spiral notebooks around with me all the time, and I even keep a notebook in my purse, just in case there’s something I want to jot down. Despite using online calendars from Outlook and Google, I can’t let go of my paper planner. I absolutely love filling in a new planner each year. My only hiatus was during grad school, when I used a clunky old PDA. It was perfect for someone who spent so much time at the computer but also needed to be able to take her planner with her. The to-do list was great for long-term assignments and the repeating event function was essential, as I actually forgot to attend class on a couple occasions. (Seriously.)
After I finished school the PDA was less necessary, as I suddenly had no homework to worry about, almost no repeating events, and a new reliance on Outlook for meeting notices. My PDA also was getting old enough that it would blank out and delete all my data from time to time, meaning I had to restore from the last time I synced with my computer. So I switched back to a paper planner. After a few years of waffling between weekly views and monthly views, little cheap ones that fit in my purse or larger ones that lie flat, and other such weighty matters, I settled on a single brand. For the last two years I’ve used planners from time.mine. I like the wide margins for lists and the space at the top for general week-related stuff (though I wish it wasn’t titled “my time this week” because that doesn’t make any sense to me). The spiral binding is handy (I cannot stand planners that don’t lie flat) but sometimes it gets a little bent and the back cover tries to escape from its mooring. The corners of the plastic cover are rather annoyingly sharp. Also, being 6″x9″ means it doesn’t fit in my purse, so I very rarely look at it outside of work. Which is silly, since all my work-related obligations are on my work computer.
Changes in my career and social pursuits have given rise to a need for more room for notes and a more portable design. I didn’t want one of those cheapo checkbook-sized calendars you can get at the dollar store; my purse is far too chaotic for something that flexible, and the planners inevitably get all bent up. They also don’t stay open very well, meaning unless I have a flat surface to write on, anything I write in there is nigh illegible, even to me. (And that’s saying something, given the cryptic nature of my handwriting in general.) So I did some research and decided to purchase my very first Moleskine brand planner.
If notebooks can be pretentious, then Moleskine is the top of the heap in that regard. People swear by them, mentioning how they were used by Hemingway and Picasso. Entire blogs are dedicated to them. They’re something white people like. People go to great lengths to customize them. Prominent Life Hacking sites write about them regularly.
Somehow, I can’t picture anyone showing the same devotion to Mead.
I never had any interest in Moleskine products because they’re so pricey: a small (3.5″x5.5″) ruled notebook retails at about $12. That’s more than many books that are already written in! (And Piccadilly makes a fine notebook for a fraction of the price.) In my own years as a diarist I’ve always shied away from the super fancy journals because I’d be afraid to write in them. I also prefer spirals for my diaries so they’re easy to write in on the go. My requirements for a good diary usually go in the following order of precedence: spiral, hardcover, lots of pages, narrow ruled.
But when it comes to planners, I’m picky. I’m a very “I’ll know it when I see it” kind of person. And this time around, the Moleskine hardcover 18-month weekly pocket planner really appealed to me in a way no other planner design had. I like that there’s a plain sheet of ruled paper on every facing page, giving me plenty of room for notes and lists. The paper is thick so ink neither smears nor bleeds through. It lies flat. It fits in my purse. It stays closed. It has a bookmark.
I don’t see myself picking up any Moleskine notebooks any time soon – they’re still way overpriced for me – but I may well be sold on the planners.
by Philippa Gregory: I’d heard of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII and the primary reason for his schism with the Catholic Church. However, I’d never heard of her sister, Mary, who was also the king’s mistress and possibly the mother of two of his children. This book is told from Mary’s point of view, beginning when Anne returns to the English court after spending her childhood in France, and ending at the conclusion of her reign as queen. While Anne is the focal point for much of the book, Mary’s transition from content courtier to distressed mother longing to live in the country with her children was the more compelling story. I was especially moved by her struggle between loyalty and disdain for her family. However, while the plot and description were lovely, the writing was somewhat amateurish. The adverbs in particular got a little tiresome. Almost every single line of dialogue ended with “said somethingly.” She said sweetly, he said irritably. It was distracting. All the same, I got sucked into the political and sexual intrigue of a time obsessed with social standing and royal heirs, every thought laced with ambition and superstition. Even knowing how it must end, I was still held in suspense during those final few chapters. Were the events described completely factual? I have no idea, and it really doesn’t matter. I read historical fiction to get a feel for the time period and the people. If I want names and dates, I’ll read a history book. This was a fun little trip to the past.
by Harper Lee.
by Gina Ochsner: Um. Well, this takes place in post-Soviet Russia, and is more or less about three widows – an Eastern Orthodox Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew – who all live in the same condemned apartment building with their children. Christian Lukeria torments her overweight granddaughter Tanya who spends a lot of her time obsessing over clouds and colors; Muslim Azade learns people’s secrets by smelling their excrement and worries over where she went wrong with her son Vitek; Jewish Olga frets over the fate of her idiot son Yuri and his selfish girlfriend Zoya. Also, there’s a gaggle of feral children running around. The book begins with the suicide of Mircha, Azade’s husband, whose ghost shows up soon after to cause mischief. Much of the actual plot revolves around the local museum where Yuri, Zoya, and Tanya all work. None of the exhibits are originals, and in fact most were created by Tanya herself out of candy wrappers and glue. However, when the possibility arises of a grant from some wealthy Americans, the entire apartment building is in a tizzy. The ending is happy – more or less – though it feels forced and borders on deus ex machina. This is the sort of novel where you have to just absorb things as they come and not approach it expecting some sort of coherent storyline. Mostly it’s about a group of characters, and much of the book is spent explaining their personalities, motivations, and histories. And that’s usually fine by me, except that this time around everyone was so exceptionally screwed up that I couldn’t muster the least bit of sympathy for any of them. Perhaps another reader would find it darkly humorous but mostly I was just glad when it was over.
by Ray Bradbury: This is more an interconnected series of short stories and vignettes about the future history of man’s colonization of Mars than a single novel. Written more than 60 years ago, it’s fascinating to see the mixture of futuristic technology with old-fashioned sensibilities (get them womens in the kitchen!). For example, the chapter dealing with all the African Americans in the South leaving for Mars felt like it took place in the 1930s. And I sincerely doubt any Martian colonies would empty out in the face of a war on Earth today. On the contrary, I imagine the threat of war would lead to an increase in interplanetary immigration. When this was written, WWII had just ended and war was still viewed as a noble endeavor, and there’s certainly no way Bradbury could have foreseen how unpopular it would become mere decades later. And yes, we’ve known for many years that Mars is uninhabited (and uninhabitable by human beings), but that’s not really the point. This could be any planet, even our own. There’s a strong parallel to the history of European colonization of the American continents.