We may think of reading and writing as opposite activities, but there’s a long history of people reading with blank books by their side so they could write out their favorite passages as they went. Deidre Lynch is interested in what these homemade books can tell us about the people who filled them up. Like someone’s Pinterest board or Tumblr blog today, these curated collections of words told a story about a person’s individual identity. Beyond that, they could also tell the story of relationships within a social group, with many people contributing extracts to a single book.
Bonus clip
Works mentioned
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Further reading
Leah Price at Public Books – Books on Books
Anna Russell at The New Yorker – Can Bullet Journalling Save You?
Radhika Jones at BookForum – Uncreative Writing
Stephanie Burt at The New Yorker – The Promise and Potential of Fanfiction
Michael Mindzak and Sarah Elaine Eaton at The Conversation – Artificial intelligence is getting better at writing, and universities should worry about plagiarism
Stacey Megally at BookRiot – The art of ghostwriting is as human as it gets
The evolution of the book – Julie Dreyfuss (video)