The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper: A New Statesman and Spectator Book of the Year
Roland Allenamazon.com
The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper: A New Statesman and Spectator Book of the Year
In collecting such a medley of ideas, Leonardo was following a practice that had become popular in Renaissance Italy of keeping a commonplace and sketch book, known as a zibaldone. But in their content, Leonardo’s were like nothing the world had ever, or has ever, seen. His notebooks have been rightly called “the most astonishing testament to the p
... See moreWalter Isaacson • Leonardo da Vinci
The beauty of a notebook is that it indulges provisional thoughts, half-finished ideas, unpolished sketches, and drafts for treatises not yet refined. That, too, suited Leonardo’s leaps of the imagination, in which brilliance was often unfettered by diligence or discipline. He occasionally declared an intent to organize and refine his notebook jott
... See moreWalter Isaacson • Leonardo da Vinci
the notebooks do provide a pretty good snapshot of a creative brain moving very fast, while serving as an instrument of grounding and refinement.
Adam Moss • The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing
Writers have kept notebooks since time immemorial. The auctorial equivalent to the artist’s sketchbook is the “commonplace book,” which can contain everything from newspaper clippings to grocery lists to attempts to capture those inspirational bolts out of the blue.
I’m sure that somewhere out there, there is a writer who is far more disciplined tha... See more
I’m sure that somewhere out there, there is a writer who is far more disciplined tha... See more
Cory Doctorow • The Memex Method
This vast constellation of 148,000 notes shows that the art of creative note-making is alive and well. And this is not just an archive but a philosophy of thinking and writing. Didi-Huberman’s three-stage creative rhythm: patient collection, exhilarating reassembly, and musical composition, shows how fragments, properly arranged, may reveal unexpec... See more