How to make a journal of your life by d.price is a little book and quick read, with a total page-count of 117 pages but every sheet is packed with drawings and handwritten text. It does what it sets out to do, in eight chapters it tells you how to write, draw, take photographs to print and stick in and other ways to provide a souvenir of your life in a notebook. Every time I open this book it makes me smile.


I bought this book to inspire me to restart my sketchbook habit that had been lying dormant for a while, and it has done just that. The illustrations contained within the book are simple and not too intimidating for the beginning artist when compared to their efforts. And the blind contour exercise of drawing without looking at the paper is a classic.

Daniel Price is the perfect person to write this book as he has followed this path and even published his journals for 7 years as the moonlight chronicles and he has included excerpts from these in the back. The author encourages the reader to slow down, and record the simple pleasures in life as he has done.

My favorite part of this book is the section where he asks people who he goes out for coffee with to draw the salt cellar and the reactions from his victims. I might have to try that myself.

The only thing I would change about this book was to make it longer, it was over far too soon but that is often the way with handwritten books.

I would recommend this book to anybody who wanted to start an illustrated journal or somebody like myself who already does but is feeling a little uninspired. It would be the perfect gift for any aspiring artist or writer, probably accompanied by a nice notebook.

Check out my new book blog Engrossed in a Good Book . ( )

I attempted to use this book in a class in journal writing I taught at a local psychiatric center, but the class never got into it. However, I enjoyed reading the book. ( )

This tiny book is written for adults but usable for young adults as well. Witty and informative the book gives lots of ideas for building up a personal collection of handmade journals. Price wants the end result to be a quirky and idiosyncratic book rather than a slick or polished item which shows nothing of one's own interests at the time. It’s a time capsule of sorts.
Price sees the value of journaling as self-discovery, which I have to agree upon as the true essence of someone doing this type of crafting or writing. When I first had to do journaling, it was as a high schooler for English class. The value at the time was to get us college prep students used to writing, any type of writing. I found it boring but actually useful for college. I never really knew how much time to spend detailing what I was supposed to be writing about. If I had known that beforehand, I would not have stressed over the whole ordeal as much as I did. The real value I discovered later on was as a tool for understanding the way and reason for my thinking and feelings. It was still a difficult habit to master but I saw the relative importance to people who can or prefer to communicate through written form. In the case of journaling, it usually became mixed media in form.
Some people nowadays do genealogy as a type of personal discovery. Some write memoirs, fiction or poetry. Journaling is actually easy, immediate and requires little time trying to devise imaginative and elaborate constructions.
An excellent and interesting book. ( )

A quirky introduction to journal making. Lots of creative ideas with a section on photography, how to make your own journal from scratch and encouraging you to look closer at the world around you. This can be the mundane like the cars around you to the street lamps through to nature and the small bugs crawling through the leaves. He encourages you to get out into the world, stop watching it go by you and stop and participate in it instead.

Small but invaluable tool. Aimed at beginners rather than those who have been making and creating journals for years. ( )

Nice little book, literal it measures 4 3/4 by 6 1/4. Little in size but, packed with some really good advice. The book is written by Dan Price and published by Ten Speed Press.

Price starts with 3 points about why to write a Journal; "1. My thoughts, deeds, and doings are who I am trying to be, and each one is a gift that does warrant recording. 2. If I grow tired of self-examination, all I need do is lift my eyes and behold the beauty of our glorious world. 3. Writing down my own thoughts will be the easiest thing in the world to do because I'll be expressing my own innermost feelings and only I know what those are." These three points are delivered in the believable "folk" style with which the the book is printed. Each page looks likes a hand written pages from a journal. As a matter of fact the last 20 pages are excerpts page from Price's journal. After a couple introductory chapters about why to journal Price get down to busy with chapters on how to write, sketch, photograph and collect items for a journal. Price's style clearly says "Hey you can do this!"

The Price's ideas maybe obvious for some people, which is fine. I think the bigger point of the book is that even if you can't write the perfect sentence, sketch a photo realistic scene or take a great picture you can produce a wonderful journal. The bigger problem with the book is that it is out of date. Price recommends bulk loading film. I doubt that any bulk loaded film could ever compete with the 400+ pictures I get with a 1GB SD card. (I am actual surprised you can still buy film, but not Koda-chrome.) But, these changes in the photography industry really don't affect Price's advise for photography, so it doesn't hurt the book at all.

This book would be a huge help to any teenager assigned a journaling project, or about to backpack across Europe.

On the down side, my book sort a fell apart, the binding came unglued. But Price's own advice in the book is "Every problem is a opportunity for learning new things". So I think I'll use the pages on making your own blank book and re-bind the book myself. There not a down side to the book at all. ( )