"Part of what Nunokawa is after is a sense of how art and literature not just move but also transform us, by becoming a part of how we engage the world. In that sense, the essays here can be taken as close reads
if close reading can be stripped clean of analysis, taken into an emotional realm. But even ... Read moremore, he is recording the slow, amorphous passage of experience, in which what we think and what we do, what we ponder and remember, make up in large measure who we are."-David Ulin, Los Angeles Times "Reading the entries in Note Book is a warm, wistful experience, like sitting over coffee with a charming, well-read friend whose penchant for gentle melancholy only makes him better company."
Jennifer Howard, Times Literary Supplement "Mr. Nunokawa cobbles a liturgy from the Western canon, and his notes resemble homilies in which he strives after secular consolations."
Jeremy Axelrod, Wall Street Journal "[A] winning look at how people connect, or attempt to connect, in person and online."
Publishers Weekly "Whitmanesque... Looking to befriend the reader yet not exactly open a conversation, Nunokawa draws one in with these temptingly lyric essays while resisting the larger buffers of narrative or explicit chronological context. An engaging multimedia project offering even more food for thought when translated to the linearity of the printed page."
Kirkus "The Facebook revolution has given rise to a new art form, the digital essay. At the forefront, Jeff Nunokawa and his Note Book (Princeton) will turn haters into lovers"
Vanity Fair "A beautifully crafted book... Nunokawa's take on [Facebook] ... is like none I have seen."
Jacqueline Cutler, Newark Star Ledger "These essays from a Hawaiian-born professor of literature, Jeff Nunokawa, have left me utterly charmed"
Nicholas Blincoe, Daily Telegraph "Note Book is the handsome record of a project consciously poised between codex and pixel. The physical manifestation of a years-long experiment by ... Jeff Nunokawa, Note Book is just that: a book made out of daily Facebook posts, written using the platform's rarely used Notes feature, which allows users to write at length... What makes Nunokawa's efforts so different is their crafted quality and the reservoir of intelligence, knowledge and feeling from which they are drawn. [These] essays should leave us hopeful that every new iteration of social media is built by us and merely awaits infusions of subversive thought, rough and ready democracy, and moral fervor."
Geordie Williamson, The Australian Show Less