When I read, whether nonfiction, fiction, or poetry, I can’t help but underline and highlight and scribble in the margins whenever I’m struck by a word, a phrase, an idea, or a retort (you’ll find psh, yeah right! scrawled in a few margins among my books). Until last year, though, these highlights and marginalia lay sidelined across the expanse of my bookshelves because I’d not bothered to devise a system for organizing and using them.
But then I read a Thought Catalog article by Ryan Holiday in which he limns the benefits of keeping a commonplace book—a “depository for ideas, quotes, anecdotes, observations and information.” Brilliant. Now I collect and curate all these random and disparate gems in my own commonplace book, and I’m so glad about it—on a personal level, it’s gratifying to review my notes and relive those particular literary moments and to consider why I found that turn of phrase or that idea important at that time. Moreover, on a practical level, a commonplace book is like an external hard drive for your brain—and if you’re a writer, this is essential, as there’s rarely enough space in three pounds of grey matter to synthesize and store a lifetime of ideas and imaginations.
I’m sharing with you ten of my favorite 2015 additions to my commonplace book, albeit I found selecting only ten passages, from nine different books, so difficult! (I could make a list of ten passages from each of these books—especially from the Sherlock Holmes stories I’ve been reading this year.)
I have lots of books on my reading list and look forward to adding to my commonplace book in 2016. Maybe you’ll start a commonplace book in new year? If so, happy highlighting!
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1.“She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! alas! she must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.”
—Jane Austen, Persuasion
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2.“Literature makes us better noticers of life…which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn makes us better readers of life.” —James Wood, How Fiction Works
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3.“Austen acknowledges the importance of emotion, but intense feelings help her heroines choose better, not worse.”
—Michael Chwe, Jane Austen, Game Theorist
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4.“[Alexander the Great’s] feats were said to reduce Caesar to tears of inadequacy.” —Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra
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5.“In the meadow, a cow lowed and went hustling over the bents and the long, unbitten buttercups.” —William Morris, The Well at the World’s End
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6.“I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.” —Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
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7.“Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.” —Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: The Ultimate Collection
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8.“As for me, nothing in the universe can be the same if somewhere, no one knows where, a sheep we never saw has or has not eaten a rose. Look up at the sky. Ask yourself, ‘Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?’ And you’ll see how everything changes.” —Atoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
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9.“Novels ought to have hope . . . there’s no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we’re going to die; what’s important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.” —Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
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10.“‘Excellent!’ I cried.
“‘Elementary,’ said he.”
—Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: The Ultimate Collection
Vanessa Christensen is our associate editor and proofreader extraordinaire. We met Vanessa at AWP in Minneapolis when she approached us and said something along the lines of “hi.” Though we may be paraphrasing. Vanessa was a huge help on the Nomfiction anthology and we can’t wait to overload her with more commas and participles again soon.
