From Ancient Scrolls to Digital Summaries

This one is a little meta - it’s about reading, notebooks, and all that sort of thing.

If that’s your cup of tea, keep reading!

If not, today’s newsletter might not be for you, but I’ll be back next week with something different for you.

The Notebook: A History Of Thinking On Paper

I’m wrapping up a fun read, The Notebook: A History Of Thinking On Paper, and wanted to share my thoughts on this interesting little book.

I recorded a short video overview of it as well, you can check that out right here if you’re so inclined.

The book starts off with a modern story, that I surprisingly didn’t know about, and then dives deep into history to lay out the beginning of our knowledge of the use of notebook - before there was even paper to use!

From there the author quickly moves into the medieval / Renaissance time where paper was becoming easier to produce which meant cheaper books…and paper notebooks that could be purchased by people other than the church or very wealthy (as was the case with parchment based books).

There’s a good number of stories interwoven into the historical notes so that the book moves along and is a pretty fun read. I’ve learned about important historical figures I had never come across before and others who we’ve all heard about (DaVinci).

If you’re into notebooks and would like an interesting and fun read, I recommend checking it out.

Recommended

How I’m Using ShortForm In 2024

While we’re on the subject of reading and writing, I wanted to touch on ShortForm. It’s a service I’ve used for years and I love their condensed overviews (1 pagers and entire book summaries).

I recently shared a video about how I’m using ShortForm to save time and get those “gold nuggets” from books:

This can be a super effective way to "triage” your reading - you can quickly get an overview of the book, find out if it’s what you want to invest the time and effort to fully read, or find the parts that will be most rewarding for you.

For non-fiction reading, I think having a tool like ShortForm available is incredible.

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