Tom Cox had me with these words: "Sure, sex is great, but have you ever cracked open a new notebook and written something on the first page with a really nice pen?" I too am a stationery fan. My husband laughs when I have to feel the pages of a notebook before deciding whether to purchase it or not. This book was inspired by the theft of a notebook and other items inside a rucksack in 2018. The author extracted parts from his twelve years' of journaling. Tom Cox can writes expressively, describing his environment so well, you'll feel you are there with him. His words can stir your heart, make you laugh out loud, sigh, think a great deal, and snort (although that might just be me). I loved the parts with his mum and dad and also their illustrations. My two favourite pieces are: "I look back fondly on an era when 'utterly overwhelmed by everything all the time' wasn't the standard human mind state." Oh, yeah. and "Email from my dad. No subject heading. Just says 'WE ARE LIVING IN THE AGE OF THE GIT. Nothing else." He's so correct. This is my first book by this author, and it certainly won't be my last. Very entertaining.

I picked this up after reading his first novel Villager earlier in the year. It is a slim volume of notes collected from various notebooks the author has kept over the years. It is an utter joy. His observations are witty, sharp and brilliant. If you live in the countryside, especially in the West Country or Norfolk, there is a lot that you will relate to. It is an odd little book and quite unlike anything I have read before but I thoroughly enjoyed it and encourage you to give it a chance.

This is my first Tom Cox book but I've been following him on various social media sites for a long time and I had a feeling I would enjoy Notebook because I enjoy his musings on so many things from nature to flared trousers and everything in between. I wasn't wrong. Notebook is an absolute pleasure from start to finish. It has a really calming feel to it and it flows perfectly despite it consisting of seemingly random snippets placed together (although they are curated into chapters of similar material). It's a thin volume so it didn't take very long to read, but it's chock-full of delightful anecdotes, all taken from notebooks filled by Cox. You could read it slowly, taking it one or two notes at a time, or you could read it in a couple of greedy gulps as I did. I loved the author's writing style, with a fabulous and eclectic selection of intelligent thoughts and observations, and humorous vignettes. He writes beautifully and with care about his surroundings, the landscape and the animals in and around it, and then swiftly side-steps into an exchange with his father which, without fail, always made me laugh. To further enthral the reader, the book contains striking illustrations from both of his parents for the first time which makes this into quite the family affair. Notebook is a gorgeous little read. If I could write as eloquently as Tom Cox then I'd be scribbling away all the time but alas the best I can manage is a shopping list. Thankfully, there are collections like this that provide thoughtful and poetic food for the mind. Notebook ought to be available on prescription.

From a minor crime (not committed by the author!) to autobiographical insights (“I want my autobiography to truly sum up my life so I’m going to call it The Reason You Can’t Find Your Wallet Is Because It’s In Your Hand”) this is a novel book of short thoughts, longer thoughts and notebook stuff from a very funny and idiosyncratic writer. Tom Cox is an author of several books on life in the country, humour and folklore, short stories and other fiction. This book is in memory of a notebook stolen in a rucksack in a Bristol pub in 2018. While perhaps not an enormous lost to world literature, it did contain the author’s thoughts and observations written down over a period of twelve months. As someone who writes in a notebook or else it didn’t happen, and lists of books, authors and fascinating ideas for further research, I felt sympathy for a loss of a work of personal nature. In a world where people save their thoughts, impressions and observations to social media, there is something to be said for the act of physically writing in a notebook which makes fleeting thoughts solid and captures them for later use. For Tom Cox, writing in a carefully chosen note book is forming a resource for later use, or at least a shopping list. This witty, book of tumbling thought and action is an unusual read, but a wonderfully entertaining little book which I was very pleased to have the opportunity to read and review. This book forms a link to the real memories of a life which collects smudges of mud, the smell of a borrowed dog, the real stuff of life which is more like a printed photograph than an online image. Looking at memorable graves in Norwich cemetery with a an overly ambitious cat attempting to leap the distance between gravestones is one note, which follows an observation of cows who seem reluctant to allow him to walk across their field and sets the style for these pages of sometimes surreal conversations. Surreal messages and stories are the especial domain of the author’s father, who seems to delight in strange disconnected factoids, often transmitted in block capitals. “I saw a dragonfly in Nottingham city centre the other day” is one of the milder ones- a more brutal one involves an axe and a finger eating bird. His mother adopts a quieter and more wistful tone , such as “I’m waking up with an itchy nose and swollen eyes every morning. I think I have to stop the cat sleeping on my face.” Not that Tom himself is beyond the strange observation: in a piece about city noise as opposed to the quietness of country nights, he records that on a walk “I found the cul- de -sac where the ice cream vans sleep at night”. Those who follow Tom on Twitter will recognize some of his shorter comments such as “It’s really hard for countries not to be crap since all the people best qualified to run a country would never in a billion years want to run a country” . This is an eminently quotable book, with one sided conversations by the author which deal with the small elements of life, the unreliable memories we have of perfect days and more challenging moments. Perfect for a quick read, especially for those who enjoy observing nature in all its variety and people in their sometimes odd moments, this is a lovely book for a friendly gift or an quiet treat.

A Frankenstein's monster of a book that works largely due to Tom's usual mix of wit and casual charm. Made up of a collection of excerpts from Tom's many notebooks it somehow feels more personal than Tom's previous autobiographical cat books. Notebook provides a rare insight into the mind of a driven, creative and unique person.