Noteworthy

At the moment I’m in a phase of reading that can only be described as promiscuous. I keep dashing from one novel to another, absorbing a few pages here and another lot there. I blame my reading list. I have one of those contrary natures that much prefers self-motivated activity to required work. It’s totally irrational. I love George Eliot and the Brontes (apart from the Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which is feeling the wrong side of wordy). It’s just that the minute I’m meant to be immersed in all things Victorian, my tastes change tack and begin hankering after 20^th Century Czech short stories and modern poetry. However, I’m tempering these tendencies with the knowledge that I have decades of reading ahead of me. I don't need to be acquainted with the contents of every single book on my shelves right now. Some will just have to wait.
I can’t be alone though in my desire to accumulate books, even when I know that there will be little time to enjoy them in the near future. But the act of acquisition is easier than the commitment of reading. One is quick where the other is concerted. Perhaps it parallels the difference between having an idea and executing it; the stage of dizzy possibility is easy. Plucking at all the potential and turning it into something solid requires both craft and graft. Buying a book or brainstorming ideas is safe because there is no margin for failure. Yet the true satisfaction lies in producing something that takes time, or in climbing up through some 900 pages to view a novel’s breathtaking summit. Perhaps part of my difficulty this summer holiday has been in the constant tug between creating (writing, photography, drawing, scrap-books) and receiving (reading, reading and more reading, with a few films thrown in). I'm slowly working out how to give both sides equal attention.
Luckily, the two can also be combined. I have something new and exciting in my possession. It’s pictured up above. Looks like a novel, yes? Jude the Obscure, to be precise, bound in red with beautiful detail on the front. I’ve read it before, totally absorbed in Thomas Hardy’s (typically) tragic tale of Jude Fawley’s attempts at academia. The version held up here though only has snippets of the story. An odd page here and there – the contents or occasional beginning of a chapter. That’s because the cover no longer wraps around a narrative. It’s been transformed into a notebook. A ripe glut of blank pages wait to be filled, while brown remnants of the original remain for inspiration. It allows both reading and writing – a collaboration (at least for my purposes) between creating and receiving.
It was handmade by Florence Fox, who crops up on my blog almost as regularly as mentions of vintage clothes. Alongside her stellar photography, shown in the shots above, she has recently set up a business focusing on literary stationary. Notebooks from Adam Bede to Richmal Compton’s William the Pirate can be found in her Etsy shop. Many of them have names in the title, giving them the potential to be very personal gifts. She’ll also seek out specific books or authors if asked nicely. Many of the illustrations carefully cut from these books are also turned into greetings cards or standalone pieces of art. Additionally, for the truly word-hungry there are Scrabble scorebooks “made from scratch.” They’re bound in green, providing a very gorgeous means of keeping track of who won which Scrabble game - dangerously desirable for those with competitive natures (I’m among them, and it’s only my brother who will play Scrabble with me now). Flo gave me this notebook for my birthday. I’m saving it for when I start studying again in October, so that the new pages are used up during a time of new experiences.
It is a difficult time for young adults. Many of us now know that employment prospects are shaky and a degree is no guarantee of a job. Flo is two years older than me and is self-employed, rather than at university. She has been using all her self-motivated talents and creative fervour to forge a different route. It’s not an easy option. The young crafters and grafters like her merit supporting right now. And besides, why wouldn’t one want a delicious one-off notebook that would look just as at home on a vintage shelf as in the stationary section of an independent store?

She has also created a code giving Clothes, Cameras and Coffee readers 10% off purchases until 2014. Just type in CCC2013 when prompted.
The outfit is a mix-and-match of items dredged up from various charity shops, with shirt, shorts and wool blazer all second hand. The colour combination was partly inspired by Burberry's last LCM show titled 'Writers and Painters'.