How to keep a commonplace book
A commonplace book is one notebook of the lines worth returning to. How to collect an item, keep it, and have it return.
For centuries, readers copied out the words they would otherwise underline and never find again. A sentence from a novel. A line of a poem. A thought from a letter. Not a diary, and not a scrapbook. A private anthology of borrowed words, collected slowly, returned to often.
The practice
You collect an item from anything you are reading. It takes a few seconds. The item is the text, with its source and the date you collected it. You are its keeper, not its author.
You can add a private annotation, a note to your future self about why it mattered. Later, once you have half-forgotten it, the item returns as a recollection. Collecting something is not the same as filing it away to never see again.
What it is not
Not a feed, and not a platform. No likes, no followers, no streaks. A collected item is the unit, and the page is the page. The design tries to disappear so the words can be the only thing in the room.
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The letter
Read issue 1. Ten we kept this week, and how to keep your own.