Jen’s Reviews > The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper > Status Update

It’s funny, comforting and delightful that since the beginning, this is how we diary: to vent the petty, self-indulgent, bitter whining. Some of diarisits’ best writing may be in their angry screeds: …”she continued in that ecstasy until noon” referring to a wife’s “brawl and revile”. I am LOL, really. We can dispense with self-consciousness at our bias and navel gazing: that’s the point.

The history education in this book: Michael of Rhodes, Newton, Louis XIV, Pepys. So good.

P 150 bequeathed another band name for the 2026 list: Herring Busses, from the Dutch, “haringbuisen.”

Not picturing them sitting in rows peeking out the deck and smiling with their mouths open, drenched in the spray of speed boats traveling in convoys.

So interesting! I forgot about the Chaucer-Boccaccio link. I am compelled to note here I went back to the TOC as this is Ch 7 now and we’re back in what is now S Europe again. Okay. I realize, this is not “The” history of thinking on paper, this is a very limited history of the thinking on paper by people in a handful of western countries populated by white people. Fine, but be for real.

Michael of Rhodes: not only was he teaching himself algebra, modern notation hadn’t been invented yet - no symbols for =, x, +, - nevermind exponents which he was also doing in words. I’m shook. When I read the original description of his manuscript I thought this dude was neurodivergent; now I’m convinced. I am also struck with sonder: every life highly textured when you look closely.