Joan Didion’s notebooks are up for sale, a small but defining part of her estate being auctioned off in New York next week. As I scrolled through the catalogue of possessions – beautiful dinnerware, tasteful desks and chairs, artworks and that woven rattan armchair – it was her collection of blank notebooks that caught my eye.
There are 38 available, separated into piles and wrapped in simple white string. 38 blanks that she had in her care before her passing (who knows how many more were in her home). Didion was, of course, famed for keeping a notebook. Some connect with the literary titan through her prose, others her innate sense of style. Me? It’s the hoarding of notebooks.
Her final 38, soon to go to a new home, were cloth-bound or leather, in shades of black, brown, purple and red. Some are Moleskins, others by Clairefontaine. The closest to a novelty notebook is printed with the orange cover of a Penguin classic paperback of Pride and Prejudice, or with cartoon figures and the Vanity Fair masthead. So far, so literary; classic Didion subtlety and chic.
My own collection is not subtle or chic, nor have I reached the heights of 38. There are just two in my work bag right now: an A5 with 148 x 210mm lines and a plain blue cover, and a tiny one covered with floating cat heads. Both are from Japanese store Daiso, which says a lot about my tastes. Cute and slightly dumb? I must have it. (My other favourite, forgotten about until now, is also a Daiso find, featuring the floating figures of otters).
I use these various notebooks for daily to-do lists, brainstorming, taking notes that I’ll probably never look at again after a meeting (I’ve recently found myself taking notes in meetings on my laptop; a habit I despise). I don’t do grids – plain or lined paper, please – and I absolutely prefer a soft cover.
Sometimes I like the simplicity of a $7 spiral reporter's notebook, never worried about ‘wasting pages’ on these purely functional pads. It’s for that reason that I still have ‘fancy’ versions that haven’t been cracked open years after I’ve bought or received them: a pink Gucci notebook, a brown leather Deadly Ponies compendium with notebook inside, never touched. Give me the frivolity of an otter notebook; my anxiety can't handle the pressures of preserving chic.
There is a certain type of person who will be nodding their head in recognition in understanding this stationery obsession, and thinking about their own collection. When I put the call out on Instagram one night, asking people to share them with me, I received a deluge of replies.
“My husband tried to make me cull mine when we moved house, but I couldn't,” said Juliet, founder of vintage store Noon Goods and a woman after my own heart. “I also have a separate collection with 1-3 pages filled in then never used again…”
Rachel Soo Throw, the book obsessed brains behind Instagram account The Lit List, shared a photo of her collection, a mix from Papier HQ, An Organised Life and Daiso. Writer Saraid de Silva sent me a photo of hers, instantly winning ‘highest pile’.
Josie Campbell, publicity manager at RNZ, is another notebook obsessive who usually “has a bunch running at any point - notes and lists and lists of lists”. She has options for work, a house project, her Te Reo Māori classes, jobs around the house and garden over summer.
“I use them to take notes in meetings, to jot down ideas or things that I suddenly remember and know I’ll forget again, and to keep running to-do lists that I’ll start again every day or two,” she says of her usage, which will read like soothing content to many.
“Crossing things out when they’re done is extremely satisfying in a way a tick on a digital document never will be. I like to write a fresh to-do list on Friday afternoon for the week ahead – going into the weekend with a tidy list feels good, and once I’ve written the list it feels okay to let go of the week in my mind.”
Beck Wadworth could be described as New Zealand’s Queen of Notebooks: she launched An Organised Life in 2013, offering chic minimalist styles that chic minimalist girlies adore. Unsurprisingly she has her own collection for various purposes, using a daily planner that doubles as a notebook and schedule planner, every single day.
“I've kept every one as a keepsake and currently have a collection from the last 10 years. A lot can happen in 365 days and they're a pretty incredible piece of my life to look back on in years to come,” she says. She has others “to unravel my ideas”, journaling notebooks, goal planning notebooks, baby notebooks. She knows notebooks. So what makes a good one? According to Beck, it’s “a good quality cover and premium paper that allows your pen to glide on the pages”.
What is it about notebooks that attracts a certain (Type A) type to collect, use, hoard? It is undoubtedly their ability to organise – tasks, ideas, thoughts – and help find clarity and direction. On a superficial level, they can also aesthetically define a person. Flowery and vintage, typographic, with uplifting quotes, plain, a niche Japanese brand: they’re like an accessory, an extension of personal style and taste.
The Moleskin is emblematic of this: it can say poetic, practical or poser. Amelia Dimoldenberg, host of YouTube chat show Chicken Shop Date, used it to expertly poke fun at the pretensions of The 1975 frontman Matty Healy in a recent episode, asking, “Do you carry a Moleskin around with you? You look like you would.” He immediately got the dig. “I do,” he replied with a pained expression on his face. “I actually do…”
Didion wrote about the impulse to write things down as a “peculiarly compulsive one”, but she was writing of the physical act of recording things in them, rather than an admiration for the physical object. But perhaps the reasoning is the same, even - especially - in the age of the notes app. It is there that I keep a record of my ‘vertigo diary’, but never a to-do list.
“Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” Or maybe, like Joan, we just like to collect pretty and practical things.
