I’m a confessed notebook, sketchbook, and journal nerd, so I consume books like this like a bottomless barrel of gummi bears. It’s twenty-six writers on what they actually do with a notebook. Sue Grafton, Dorianne Laux, Kim Stafford, John Dufresne, Kyoko Mori, Ilan Stavans, and a bunch of others, all working the same question from different angles — what goes in, what the thing is for, which pen, which paper, whether anybody else ever gets to read it. There are several print journal entries alongside the finished work that came out of them, so you can see the raw material and what it turned into. Phillip Lopate’s foreword notes the notebook is where you get to write badly on purpose, to be unfair and clumsy and stupid with nobody watching. Except I think, as I scribble in my A5 pages every day, can you be assured nobody’s watching?