Dan Price

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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 . show less

This is the meandering life story of Dan Price, one of the better known 'personalities' of the voluntary simplicity movement/ethos. Dan takes his simplicity a little more seriously than most, and over the past 20 years has spent his time living in various simple ways, including years living out of a tent; experimenting with tipis; building his own 'hobbit hole' and underground structures of various sorts. Along the way he has continually divested himself of his possessions, finding freedom show more as he went.

This is not really a 'how-to' book, rather it is an extension of the journals Dan is known for, albeit a slightly more organised and 'slick' version. His journey is told in a quirky and entertaining way, and in a manner that feels truthful - he shares how sad he is that his ex-wife and children never agree to live with him in his simple style (though his ex-wife and he still have a close relationship), and he is quick to share his mistakes.

While Dan Price's way of living might be a bit too extreme for most of us (it is not one I would readily embrace) it is still inspiring for anyone who is interested in voluntary simplicity - if he can pare his life down so much, there is plenty of hope for those who want to simplify their own lives a bit less. show less

This is a short guide that provides an introduction to journaling. The author shows that there are a few different things you can do with a journal and are not limited to writing down angst-ridden memoirs. Honestly, the ideas in here are not ground breaking, but they may give just the right kind of spark and inspiration to someone out there who thought all journals are the same or that they have nothing to contribute to a journal.

The author does not break any new ground, but has a free and show more breezy style that is easy to digest. There are also some helpful tips on how to include plants or other objects in your journal. Again, this is not anything ground breaking, but it could give someone just the right amount of inspiration when they need it. show less