The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

I recently finished Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, and enjoyed it very much, as I thought I would. For as long as I can remember, I have been an incorrigible notebook fiend. Even as I embraced digital notes and e-ink note-taking devices such as the Boox and Supernote, I’ve always kept a paper notebook that holds a chaotic mishmash of notes: to-dos, timestamps of memorable scenes as I watch shows, thoughts, ideas, reflections, quotes, you name it. My notebook is usually next to me at home and it’s where anything fleeting gets entered before whatever I want to keep gets logged into Obsidian as a long-term note. So I came to The Notebook with a great deal of excitement and anticipation, and by the time I finished it, it seemed incredible to me that Allen has produced the first book (to my knowledge) which really examines the history of the notebook as a piece of technology. It’s not a book about the contents of what people write in their notebooks—although…

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