What do you think?
Rate this book
Notes From My Phone* a self-portrait in her twenties
Michelle Junot has kept notes on her phone for years—what to pick up at the store, work-out logs, prayers, hopes, thoughts on life and death—all the while creating a snapshot of her life with an honesty that only occurs when not paying attention. In Notes From My Phone* (Mason Jar Press, 2016), Junot opens up her phone and her life to you. This collection of essays, to-do lists, vignettes, reminders and dreams mixes heart-felt memoir with the everyday marginalia that makes up a twenty-somethingʼs life and day planner. The everyday is placed side-by-side with the
universal, and in doing so, transcends to be more than the sum of its parts. If, “Life is what happens to you while youʼre busy making other plans,” then Notes From My Phone*, celebrates life in all its tedious and troubling beauty.
universal, and in doing so, transcends to be more than the sum of its parts. If, “Life is what happens to you while youʼre busy making other plans,” then Notes From My Phone*, celebrates life in all its tedious and troubling beauty.
205 pages, Paperback
First published December 6, 2016
2 people are currently reading
160 people want to read
About the author
Michelle Junot
3 books17 followersMichelle Junot is the author of Notes from My Phone* (Mason Jar Press, 2016) and and the floor was always lava.
Michelle earned her M.F.A in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from University of Baltimore and her B.A. in Communication and Dance from Centenary College of Louisiana.
You can read more about and from her at michellejunot.com .
Michelle earned her M.F.A in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from University of Baltimore and her B.A. in Communication and Dance from Centenary College of Louisiana.
You can read more about and from her at michellejunot.com .
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 25, 2016
Well, I published this book, so I have a bias, but I wouldn't have published it if I didn't think it was fantastic and universal. And wonderfully weird, wonderfully written, wonderfully economical. It's a dope trip through the mind of the author.
Read
May 17, 2017Junot's book does something that a lot of my favorite art does -- it offers mere outlines and allows the reader to fill in the blanks. This collection of notes from the author's phone offers snapshots of a period in her life, and the reader is left to fill in the spaces between each bright spot. In this way, the book insists that the reader must be involved with completing the story. I enjoy that.
The books is more religious than I'm usually comfortable with, but its strange conventions offer a glimpse of a woman fumbling through a new stage in her life and trying to resolve what role faith will play. Religious folk are likely to recognize this feeling immediately, while nonbelievers get peeks at the internal religious dialog of the witty, neurotic narrator.
The books is more religious than I'm usually comfortable with, but its strange conventions offer a glimpse of a woman fumbling through a new stage in her life and trying to resolve what role faith will play. Religious folk are likely to recognize this feeling immediately, while nonbelievers get peeks at the internal religious dialog of the witty, neurotic narrator.
November 21, 2016
If you are in your 20s, trying to figure out love, life and everything in between, this is the book for you. The book "Notes from my phone" reads like a personal journal where the author writes her thoughts and struggles as she encounters them--something that we can all relate to. She vividly describes the events that consume her with a voice that resonates with the reader. The book is super relatable and it feels like a personal gift; like, "OMG, I feel that and I've always wanted to say it but I didn't know how" kind of gift. My only regret is that when the book ends, you're left wanting more.
November 18, 2016
Michelle always astounds me with her writing and this book is no exception. Even when she does not mean to, because let's be honest sometimes you just put random things in the notes app on your phone, her insightfulness shines through. I recommend you get this book and read it, and if you have not gotten her first book you should get that as well.
November 26, 2016
Review forthcoming
March 1, 2021
An Apt Title
I found Michelle Junot’s book through a random Reddit r/writing post while attempting productive procrastination on my own thesis revisions. I was intrigued by the premise as I am midway through selecting the pieces from my notebooks to include in a project and this seemed of a similar spirit.
I appreciate the vulnerability of the work, the mixture of grocery and to-do lists, the prayers and ruminations on faith, and the longer, memoirish sections. The longest threads are about letting go of a romantic interest and a mouse problem in her apartment.
The passage that most struck me was her reflection on her grandmother’s death.
My biggest beef with the format of the book was that every new entry began with a time stamp, which I love, but only the first entry had the date. I didn’t like not knowing how many days had passed between entries.
Overall, I think this book is closer to a book of poetry than it is anything else. It really is notes from her phone and it feels pretty raw. I appreciate that there don’t seem to be edits made on the original entries, but I did catch typos in the introduction and acknowledgements. I didn’t mind this because it made me feel like the whole project was completed on a phone.
I appreciate this book for having the boldness to put it all out there and I think it’s just what I needed to move forward with my own weird, eclectic mix of minutiae and meditation. Thank you to Michelle Junot!
I found Michelle Junot’s book through a random Reddit r/writing post while attempting productive procrastination on my own thesis revisions. I was intrigued by the premise as I am midway through selecting the pieces from my notebooks to include in a project and this seemed of a similar spirit.
I appreciate the vulnerability of the work, the mixture of grocery and to-do lists, the prayers and ruminations on faith, and the longer, memoirish sections. The longest threads are about letting go of a romantic interest and a mouse problem in her apartment.
The passage that most struck me was her reflection on her grandmother’s death.
My biggest beef with the format of the book was that every new entry began with a time stamp, which I love, but only the first entry had the date. I didn’t like not knowing how many days had passed between entries.
Overall, I think this book is closer to a book of poetry than it is anything else. It really is notes from her phone and it feels pretty raw. I appreciate that there don’t seem to be edits made on the original entries, but I did catch typos in the introduction and acknowledgements. I didn’t mind this because it made me feel like the whole project was completed on a phone.
I appreciate this book for having the boldness to put it all out there and I think it’s just what I needed to move forward with my own weird, eclectic mix of minutiae and meditation. Thank you to Michelle Junot!
January 3, 2018
Poignant, heartfelt, and, at times, hilarious.
November 22, 2016
I received an ARC from MasonJar after seeing the promos for this on Twitter and I really like the premise. Seeing things like grocery lists and old letters, things people didn't intend to keep, gives a tantalizing glimpse into strangers' daily lives and inspires the imagination. (I like Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found and Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items from Around the World for more in this vein.) So I was really intrigued by the idea of collecting that same kind of forgotten rubbish but from the notes section of a phone and piecing it together into a memoir. (Not my memoir. My phone has 6 notes: a reading list, a to-do list, the rules to a drinking game, and three random strings of numbers I literally do not recognize.)
Unfortunately, Junot's notes are published precisely as she typed them. There are few names and the ones that do exist lack context. Is this entry about the ex-boyfriend she pines over or a new man in her life? It's hard to have any clear idea. The entries have times but no dates, so it's impossible to tell if her heartbreak lasts a month, a year, a decade? Rather than a joyful or hilarious insight into life in your 20s, the best word I have to describe the poetry and prose within is "maudlin". But even beyond that, my biggest problem with the book is the fact that it is extremely, extremely Christian.
There's nothing wrong with religious based works, but it's not my genre. I don't enjoy it. I'm not a Christian. I don't relate to essays about God's will. The synopsis gives little hint of the content. (Including "—what to pick up at the store, work-out logs, prayers, hopes, thoughts on life and death—" does not describe this book adequately to me.) The publisher is not a Christian publisher. I checked. Because if I'd known 80% of the book would be prayers and letters to God, I wouldn't have requested the ARC.
In all, a fast and short read but a very disappointing one. Some basic editing to clarify names, places, and times would go a long way to building a narrative without compromising the "found writing" nature of the book, as well as marketing more geared towards the intended audience, would help immensely, but as it stands, this is one I do not recommend.
Unfortunately, Junot's notes are published precisely as she typed them. There are few names and the ones that do exist lack context. Is this entry about the ex-boyfriend she pines over or a new man in her life? It's hard to have any clear idea. The entries have times but no dates, so it's impossible to tell if her heartbreak lasts a month, a year, a decade? Rather than a joyful or hilarious insight into life in your 20s, the best word I have to describe the poetry and prose within is "maudlin". But even beyond that, my biggest problem with the book is the fact that it is extremely, extremely Christian.
There's nothing wrong with religious based works, but it's not my genre. I don't enjoy it. I'm not a Christian. I don't relate to essays about God's will. The synopsis gives little hint of the content. (Including "—what to pick up at the store, work-out logs, prayers, hopes, thoughts on life and death—" does not describe this book adequately to me.) The publisher is not a Christian publisher. I checked. Because if I'd known 80% of the book would be prayers and letters to God, I wouldn't have requested the ARC.
In all, a fast and short read but a very disappointing one. Some basic editing to clarify names, places, and times would go a long way to building a narrative without compromising the "found writing" nature of the book, as well as marketing more geared towards the intended audience, would help immensely, but as it stands, this is one I do not recommend.
May 15, 2019
I loved this book so much. These micro-insights into Junot's life are accessible, heartfelt and real.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews