Because you just can't write a controversial diary every week and jiggle the plaque loose from your readers' arterial walls without someone suffering a heart attack and readership declining, the blogger must pace herself and her followers by writing about something interesting but not riling. So here we are.
Before there were computers when anything you ever wanted to know was just a Google click away, and before we lived in what is popularly known as the Information Age, people had a way of compiling and storing information for their personal use. There existed in those times (and as we will see, even now) commonplace books, blank paged volumes in which people transcribed all kinds of things – quotes, recipes, expenditures, prayers, mathematical and conversion tables, miles traveled, aphorisms, and verses they wished to remember – as an aide mémoire, as a reference, and as a repository of ideas for future projects.
Please turn the page.
Famous people in history were inveterate commonplacers. Among them are Bacon, Milton, Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, E. M. Forster, W. H. Auden, H.P. Lovecraft, and others.
Famous people not only made entries in commonplace books, other famous people wrote about them.
[L]et us take down one of those old notebooks which we have all, at one time or another, had a passion for beginning. Most of the pages are blank, it is true; but at the beginning we shall find a certain number very beautifully covered with a strikingly legible hand-writing. Here we have written down the names of great writers in their order of merit; here we have copied out fine passages from the classics; here are lists of books to be read; and here, most interesting of all, lists of books that have actually been read, as the reader testifies with some youthful vanity by a dash of red ink. Virginia Woolf, Hours in a Library.
A modern example of one is A Commonplace Book of Cookery by Robert Grabhorn with a forward by M.F.K. Fisher who observes, commonplace books are “rarely compiled by commonplace people.”
The role of commonplace books in Western intellectual life is marked. It is on-going today, both as an archive of times and personalities and as a pastime for anyone who cares to indulge.
In fact, if you’re in the area, you have until the 29th of this month to visit Yale University’s Beinicke Rare Book & Manuscript Library where an exhibit of them continues. You may also wish to set aside this date.
On Wednesday, September 12, 2001, the James Marshall and Marie-Louise Marie Osborn Collection will sponsor a lecture "Commonplace Books and the Practices of Learning in Early Modern Europe" by Anthony Grafton, Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University.
But we don’t have to leave commonplacing only in the hands of past figures and cooks. Perhaps you have kept a commonplace book of your own? Many autodidacts do. I don’t quite think that a book/reading journal strictly fits the definition – it’s the only uncommon bookkeeping that I do. Nor, strictly speaking, is a diary a commonplace book. But if there is a place where you make note of the weather, of migrations of birds, of apt quotes, or of sudden inspirations that you want to remember to include in the novel you’re writing, then you are a qualified commonplacer and an uncommon individual!
Be sure to keep your commonplace book in a safe place. Obviously, they’re of historical interest – even those written by the insignificant in history and the footnoters to it are carefully collected and preserved. Again, from the Beinicke Collection:
. . .the commonplace book of Eleazar May (Class of 1752) listing the books he read during his 'Freshmanship' in 1749. Also included is the commonplace book of Manasseh Cutler (Class of 1765), American revolutionary, minister, botanist, Western expansionist, jurist, and representative to the seventh and eighth United States Congresses (1801-05).
You never know if your "ordinary person" commonplace book might be one that historians preserve and the interested marvel over.
It’s happened before. Oxford University has this one.
The commonplace book of fifteenth century grocer Richard Hill of London, kept in English and Latin, for example, contains instructions for brewing beer, recipes for rat poison, advice for making confession, poems, card tricks, puzzles, and records of notable events and family happenings, etc.
[
Images of Hill’s manuscript here.]
If you want to begin keeping a commonplace book, here’s a web site to help you get started. Of course, by now you’ve probably observed that maintaining a personal blog can be likened to commonplacing. But, the jury is still out how historians will view bloggers’ roles in recording, maintaining, and shaping civilization.
For readers and book lovers, a commonplace book or something like it may be just the thing.
The journal used for self-education should model itself after this extended type of commonplace book. It is neither an unadorned collection of facts, nor an entirely inward account of what’s going on in your heart and soul. Rather, the journal is the place where the reader takes external information and records it (through the use of quotes, as in the commonplace book); appropriates it through a summary, written in the reader’s own words; and then evaluates it through reflection and personal thought. As you read, you should follow this three-part process: jot own specific phrases, sentences, an paragraphs as you come across them; when you’ve finished your reading, go back and write a brief summary of what you’ve learned; an then write your own reflections, questions, and thoughts.
If, as a reader, or as a writer, or out of personal interest, you keep a commonplace book where are stored snippets of conversation you eavesdropped on in an airport lounge, recipes given to you by your good friend Julia Child, formulas for the world’s next fabulous perfume, your trainspotting log, daily observations you’ve kept on the state of crops and cattle on your farm, or favorite quotations from the books you’ve read, please tell us about it below. Likewise, tell us about a favorite commonplace book by someone else that you’ve read and enjoyed.
Perhaps this one? Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book. Or H. P. Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book?
Announcements
R&BLers is pleased to announce a new Admin at the helm. Ellid, who you already know and love as Editor of the much rescued and ballyhooed (well I've shouted "Ballyhoo" when reading her diaries) series, Books So Bad They're Good, has agreed to put on the yoke assume the cloak of Group Admin. We welcome her assistance and look forward to working with her to make R&BLers the best community blogs about books and reading on the Internet. Thank you, Ellid!
I am still looking for some especial fan of My Favorite Books/Authors to step up and take over its editorship. If that person is you, please message me so that I can make the necessary arrangements that allow you to wield great power at our publishing house. Thank you in advance. Also, if you have an idea for a series you're interested in creating for R&BLers, please let me know -- I'm all about putting new writers forward.
Look for cfk's Bookflurries at its regularly scheduled WED 8PM ET slot, but don't look for cfk, who will be on temporary leave for family reasons. She'll provide details in her next installment.
I'm back in the saddle again, providing no more tropical weather disrupts my power. The e-Readers & Book Lovers Club meets this THU at 2PM ET to discuss Longitude by Dava Sobel.
While we focus on being a book club for "e-ditions," all format readers are welcome. If you'd like to suggest a title for future e-Book Club reading, please remember our two rules: Must be less than $8.00 and must NOT be one of a series. Feel free to post your suggestion in the diary's thread. Hope to see you there!
Kindle: $2.99
Amazon paperback from $5.00; hardcover used from $5.52
Powell's $3.95
Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule
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ArkDem14 |
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quarkstomper |
MON |
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Songs of Ice and Fire |
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My Favorite Books & Authors |
?? |
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Readers & Book Lovers Newsletter |
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plf515 |
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Bookflurries: Bookchat |
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THU |
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Books That Changed My Life |
etbnc, aravir |
FRI |
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Monthly Bookposts |
AdmiralNaismith |
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Books So Bad They're Good |
Ellid |
NOTE: Though not part of R&BLers Weekly Magazine Series, please look for "Indigo Kalliope: Poems From the Left" by various authors republished here every WED NOON by
aravir. Also look for "The Mad Logophile" by
Purple Priestess that appears intermittently, when the spirit moves her.
Other than that, nothing's happening.