The story behind Notebook starts with a minor crime: the theft of Tom Cox's rucksack from a Bristol pub in 2018. In that rucksack was a journal containing ten months worth of notes, one of the many Tom has used to record his thoughts and observations over the past twelve years. It wasn't the best he had ever kept - his handwriting was messier than in his previous notebook, his entries more sporadic - but he still grieved for every one of the hundred or so lost pages.
Here, Tom has assembled his favourite stories, fragments, moments and ideas from those notebooks, ranging from memories of his childhood to the revelation that 'There are two types of people in the world. People who fucking love maps, and people who don't.'
The result is a book redolent of the real stuff of life, shot through with Cox's trademark warmth and wit.