The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen (Biblioasis, 2024) is a fascinating chronology from the zibaldoni kept by the people of Florence in the mid-fourteenth century to record poems in Tuscan, prayers, excerpts from books, songs recipes, lists to the many ways people have kept notebooks of their travels, recipes, and of the natural world.|

Authors’ notebooks are particularly fascinating as are the notebooks of artists like Leonardo da Vinci of which thirteen thousand pages survive.

I was drawn to the chapter “Express yourself” on journaling as self-care and the chapter on bullet journaling as created by Ryder Carroll called “Attention deficit.”

“In search of lost time” refers to journaling as a wellness practice I hadn’t heard of before. The chapter is about notebooks kept by nurses and family members of patients who are in a coma. When they awake, they learn something of what transpired around them and the practice has shown that the risk of PTSD is cut by over 60 percent.

I couldn’t help but make my own list of the many types of notebooks I’ve kept over the years. In some cases, the notebooks are made up of lists.

I have kept notebooks

• on the garden;
• about movies I’ve seen;
• books I would like to read;
• various wines and the occasions on which they were served;
• drafts of book reviews;
• notes made while watching ‘webinars;
• passwords;
• ideas for gifts and gifts given;
• jottings for poems and poem excerpts;
• a work journal (as suggested by Austin Kleon. This goes along with a scrapbook with images and collages);
• a daily journal with (night) dreams, activities and musings;
• a small handmade journal titled “What If”:
• a small notebook of written exchanges between Sarah and me.

For many years (probably 50), I’ve kept notebooks with mini reviews of books I’ve read. Sometimes, they weren’t so mini. These are notebooks separate from the ones in which I draft reviews for publication. While I still have many of those notebooks with mini reviews, I’ve transferred many of the book titles to a computer document. That’s how I know what I read in 2024. Among the books listed below, I reviewed several for The British Columbia Review, Story Circle Book Reviews, and my blog.

Poetry

• Tilling the Darkness by Susan Braley
• A Brief and Endless Sea by Barbara Pelman
• Hologram: An Homage to P.K. Page edited by Yvonne Blomer and DC Reid
• 45 by Frieda Hughes
• Water Forgets Its Own Name by Jude Neal with art by Nichola Jennings
• Midway by Kayla Czaga
• Hazard, Home by Christine Lowther
• The Meaning of Leaving by Kate Rogers
• Anatomy of the World by Celia Meade
• Doom eager by Karl Meade
• Berberitzen by Susan Alexander
• If I Have Known Beauty: Elegies for Phyllis Webb by Lorraine Gane
• The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace & Renewal edited by James Crews
• The Weight of Survival by Tina Biello
• Cauterized by Laura Apol
• Best Canadian Poetry 25 selected by Aislinn Hunter

Memoir

• George: A Magpie Memoir by Frieda Hughes
• Winter: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May
• Permission to Land by Judy LeBlanc
• Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad
• Honeymoon in Purdah by Alison Wearing
• Splinters: another kind of love story by Leslie Jamison
• The Absent Moon: A Memoir of a Short Childhood and a Long Depression by Luiz Schwarcz
• Dear Current Occupant by Chelene Knight
• A Life in Pieces, essays by Jo-Ann Wallace
• Oscar of Between: A Memoir of Identity by Betsy Warland
• The Upstairs Delicatessen on Eating, Reading, Reading about Eating, & Eating while Reading by Dwight Garner
• Writing on Empty by Natalie Goldberg
• Ongoingness: The End of a Diary by Sarah Manguso
• This and That by Emily Carr
• Hunger: A memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
• The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl
• Travel Light, Move Fast by Alexandra Fuller

Mixed Genre

• Absence of Wings by Arleen Pare

Fiction

• The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt
• Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
• The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
• Writers & Lovers by Lily King
• Father of the Rain by Lily King
• Euphoria by Lily King
• Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King
• We Meant Well by Erum Shazia Hasan
• This is Happiness by Niall Williams
• When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
• Little Fortified Stories by Barbara Black
• The Innocents by Michael Crummey
• The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
• Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
• The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt (reread this from several years ago – so well done!)

Crime Fiction

• Blood Test by Jonathan Kellerman
• Bury the Lead by Kate Hilton & Elizabeth Renzetti
• Past Lying: A Karen Pirie novel by Val McDermid
• Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly
• Find You First by Linwood Barclay
• A Minute to Midnight, an Atlee Pine thriller by David Baldacci
• Invisible Dead by Sam Wiebe
• What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan
• The Ghost Orchid by Jonathan Kellerman
• Disappeared by David Fraser
• Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

Non-Fiction

• Held by the Land: A Guide to Indigenous Plants for Wellness by Leigh Joseph
• How to Say Goodbye by Wendy MacNaughton
• Writing by Heart: A Poetry Path to Healing and Self-Discovery by Meredith Heller
• The Art of Flower Therapy by Dina Saalisi
• You the Story by Ruta Sepetys
• The Power of Fun by Catherine Price
• Lytton by Peter Edwards and Kevin Loring
• The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller
• The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate and Daniel Mate
• Writing – the sacred art – Beyond the Page to Spiritual Practice by Rami Shapiro and Aaron Shapiro
• Stories Sell by Matthew Dicks
• Seven Secrets to the Perfect Personal Essay by Nancy Slonim Aronie

As well as astrological, tarot, palm, and tea leaf readings, much can be said about a person from the list of books they’ve read!

Happy reading in 2024.