A few people have asked me what sort of books I make my journals in, so here’s the short answer:
I bound all the books in this group. It’s not as hard as I first thought and let me choose the paper, size and shape I wanted They are not terribly long so I can have the thrill of a new volume and the book itself won’t get too dinged up from being toted around everywhere. #1 is in linen with a slipcase, #6 has a foil stamp I did with a die I designed, #7 was a travel journal for a trip to Death Valley.
After I left a journal on a plane and never got it back, I lost the heart to bind books #8 & 10 but I will some day. #11 is an old boy’s adventure novel that I refilled with watercolor paper and is a big fat journal with no writing in it at all, just drawings and watercolors. #12 is full of drawings of New York I did for #13 which was an edition (1/1) of Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince I did for Patti’s birthday. #14 is another rebound book.
These are all Moleskines, the small kind with drawing paper. #20 has an inlaid initial made of multicolored chicken shells that my friend Quentin Webb made for me. I dedicated it entirely to self portraits.
I had gone away from drawings for a while and did a lot of digital photos and mini-polaroids so I made this all black#22. #23 is a larger Moleskine I kept on a retreat from NY after 9/11. The books I favor these days are very rough and simple and bound for me by my sister, Miranda, who is a printer. #25 is my greatest hits album and with a few mouse clicks and just $10.47 can be on your own shelf in days.
These are various and sundry books. #28 was the journal I kept when Patti was pregnant and which is the basis for a new book I wrote last summer, #29 is the travel journal we kept on our New York vacation, #30 is from a trip to Bermuda and #31 is a pile of the books I use just for writing in and are far more self-indulgent and whiney than even the things you’ve seen so far on this site.
God — looking at them all arrayed like this instead of shoved in their cupboards makes me seem enormously self-involved, self-aggrandizing, narcissistic and horrible.
Danny Gregory 