Woah and stuff...

So... I can't really think of anything more to post except for maybe more examples.
That said, we went on spring break and this entire thing seems to have been put on the back burner due to Thesis. [Which I plan to have mostly completed by the end of this month, hopefully by the closed door crit next week]
Anyway, I digress.

More examples:
I found a book called Castle Diary: the Journal of Tobias Burgess, which seems to be a fictional, illustrated journal of an eleven year old boy's castle life.
While it would be neat to illustrate my story, I haven't the time to do so this semester, maybe its a project for another day... or year.

The writer/illustrator that did the Castle Diary also has an illustrated Pirate Diary that follower a nine year old carpenter's apprentice.

Further searching turned up something called Mourning Diary. [Excerpt Here]
Synopsis:
The day after his mother’s death in October 1977, the influential philosopher Roland Barthes began a diary of mourning. Taking notes on index cards as was his habit, he reflected on a new solitude, on the ebb and flow of sadness, and on modern society’s dismissal of grief. These 330 cards, published here for the first time, prove a skeleton key to the themes he tackled throughout his work. Behind the unflagging mind, “the most consistently intelligent, important, and useful literary critic to have emerged anywhere” (Susan Sontag), lay a deeply sensitive man who cherished his mother with a devotion unknown even to his closest friends.


TTFN

Dates

So, I've been thinking, journals and diaries... they need dates.
But, I'm a pain in the ass and I don't want to use actual dates, I want to use fictional dates, so I was thinking 'Nik, where can you find a fictional medieval calander?'
Answer: Elder Scrolls
The only problem is that there aren't really years persay. So that'll be guesstimated around the years Arthur probably lived. Which is in the 5th-6th century.
Here's the calender breakdown

This thing can't count...

So before I start my fourth post, let me start with, Blogger, you cannot count.
It's been telling me that I have four post on this blog when clearly I only have three. [Not including this one]

Now, for this weeks blog about Journal/Diary I thought we could explore the vast and dangerous Webs of Inter and take a look at, you guessed it, web logs. Or Blogs as we now call them.
Digital journals, away!
My first stop through the vast Webs of Inter was Xanga which seems to have upgraded a bit since I last saw it. Which was like five years ago. Either way, Xanga was probably the first social networking site I became aware of, and it was in fact, primarily a blogging site and it still is:







We aren't really going to stop on Facebook. Very few people actually blog there, so there really is no point. Next stop, Tumblr.

 Here's the 'dashboard':








Tumblr is a little like Blogger in that you can 'follow' people and their posts appear on the main page of your Tumblr, known as a dashboard. There are all kinds of different blogs you can follow, me, I am a nerd and follow mostly video game blogs and blogs that post kitten pictures and videos.

B'awww...
Ahem... moving on...

A lot of the posts are in the form of pictures, but there are a good amount of articles and gaming news that pop up on my dash. Like this blog:

Also a blog called the Drunken Moogle, but that falls under gaming articles I think. Game themed alcohol falls under gaming articles, right?

Anyway, that's all for this week folks!
T.T.F.N.

Barnes & Noble, Keyword Journals.

So, I decided since I am a little at a loss of what exactly to write on for this to just go to the Barnes & Noble website and type in 'Journals' and see what I got. Naturally, I had to sift out the blank journals that they sell, but I did actually get a few hits which also lead me to something else, but we'll get to that later.
The first thing that popped up that was actually a written journal was called Beth's Journal.
It's a Nook book, bad ratings, the book, not the Nook though we're not going to get into how I fell about the Nook and Kindle type tech, nor the obvious dangers that could come about should they do away with paper media.
Anyway! Beth's Journal is about Beth, who is released from a mental institution and gets a job, and it is a journal chronicling her fears that she will have to go back to the institution and that the visions that put her there in the first place will return.
This led me to think about Girl, Interrupted. Which is both a book and a movie. The book, from the small excerpt I read isn't exactly a journal, but more of a memoir. The voice is almost a journal one though, just as it is in the movie.

There was another that popped up called Jay's Journal. And Excerpt can be found here. Which is pretty much what it seems to be, a fourteen to sixteen year old's journal. This kid has an IQ of 149, but he is still just a kid, and it follows his life as he grows up. There's mention of Charlie's Angels, and judging from some of the language used I am guessing the original movie, so I'll put the date in the mid to late 1970's.


The Burn Journals was really quite interesting as well, the excerpt I read showed it to be a fictional journal, though it was almost a stream of consciousness journal as it seemed to be 'written' as it was happening. It reminded me almost of The Catcher in the Rye.

That's all for now.
Stay tuned... or... something.

Seagoing Vessels

I was introduced the other week to a book in journal style.
Not quite in print yet, Seagoing Vessels by Cassandra Kirvy Hirsch is a novel of a young married woman's journal in the 1850's. Her husband is eventually lost at sea.

It won Ocean Cooperative Publishing's 2009 Novel of Promise Award.

I haven't made it the whole way through the excerpt yet, but it can be found [with a bit of digging] here.

It's actually quite interesting, here is one of the entries; 

August 31, 1855 James is out today setting and bringing in mackerel trawls.  It is only for a day and a night, which has been his habit in the summer season, but for his longer trips to the Banks and the Isle of Shoals.  Of late, when he is home, he spends more time in his study than with us.  I have long felt his absence when he is at sea, not enjoying the sounds of our home when he is not about.  Yet, it is an entirely foreign thing when he professes a need to be alone in his study rather than spend time with his family.  For, I hear his footfalls above my head and they seem as removed from me as if he were not home at all. It is my habit to watch James from the cupola as he sets sail.  Young James was still abed early this morning as I made my way up the cupola steps to catch a glimpse of his father's stately vessel, named for me. Perhaps my attention was on the final step that would offer that magnificent view of our village, for it was as I took the first few steps with the speed and spring of the girl I am no longer, that I caught my dress on a loose peg jutting from one of the steps. My knee is badly bruised and has swollen to a frightful mound.  Mr. Talbot has already nailed the offending peg in place and I have applied a poultice to soothe it. In the faintest evening breeze, I sit here now on the porch with a cup of tea, the pain in my knee quite persistent. I will be moving with great care from now on. Overhead, the leaves on the Linden shake on their branches as if to reprimand me for my foolish haste this morning.

Intro. Yay!

You can find my other blog here.


For my second genre, if you haven't guessed yet, I chose a Journal/Diary theme.
I don't really think I should need to define this one, everyone has attempted a journal at one point, blogging is really just high-tech journal writing.
There are a few published works that fall into this category, Anne Frank's Diary being the most obvious one.
I remember when I was in middle school though reading a fictional piece that was written in journal format, I'll try and remember, but as of right now I cannot.
My little sister might know.

And of course, once the internet and social networking hit we got sites like Xanga, which was really just and online journal when I was in middle schoolish. Or we could be fancy and call it a blog site. Still, it's the same thing.