Plain Lab · journal

Reading Insert

Four pages log what you've read, thirty-six hold a prompt for it, and eighty-two are plain notes for everything neither one fits.

Specification

Trim: 127 × 177.8 mm · 5 × 7 in
Pages: 128
Leaves: 64
Sheets: 32
Signatures: 4 × 32pp
Spine: 7.32 mm
Paper: white
Ruling: lined
Ruling pitch: 7.14 mm · 20.25 pt · 9/32 in
Rows per page: 20

Four pages here do nothing but list what was read: a title, when it was finished, one line on whether it was worth the time. It is not a review. It is short enough to fill in without deciding first whether the book deserves one.

Thirty-six prompt pages follow, one question at the top of each and the rest of the page left for the answer. Eighty-two pages of plain college-ruled notes sit behind those, for a passage worth copying out, an argument worth arguing with on the page, or a note that has nothing to do with a prompt at all.

A reading log does not make anyone read more. It only means that six months from now, there is a record of what was read instead of a rough guess built out of half-remembered titles.

What is inside

Reading record: 4pp; Title, date finished, one line on whether it was worth the time.
Prompts: 36pp; One question at the top of the page, the rest left for the answer.
Notes: 82pp; College-ruled space for a passage, an argument, or a note a prompt did not ask for.

The film

Page by page

A vertical film from our own bench — this page contacts nobody's server to play it, and downloads nothing until you press play.

A vertical film, 27 seconds: the ruling page and the figures printed on its last leaf. Synthesised ambient bed, no dialogue — captions in three languages.