Look at this gorgeous book! The author is a middle-aged married woman with kids. Educated and literate, she could be you or any of your friends. (Yes, she is a little obsessed with structuring this book around a fishing metaphor.) In her ordinariness, she speaks to us. You or I can put together a dream journal that is personal and reflective, a luminous creation that defines you or me in more startlingly insightful ways than a "day" journal.
The book is a cosy 7-inch by 7-inch paperback: a perfect square. It's bigger than those palm-sized "gift books" so you can comfortably read it and study the illustrations. Yet its cute square shape make it snazzier than your average trade paperback. It's an eye-catcher. You could just tie it up with ribbon to make a pretty gift.
Inside are eight years worth of dreams. (Eighty dreams, so she either had only, or culled only, about ten dreams per year. That's encouragingly do-able.)
Open the book. Katherine Nelson puts her dream on the right-hand page (colored a creamy ivory tone). Sometimes it's a concise snapshot. Sometimes it's a detailed story. It never runs longer than one page. It never seems to waste a word. On the left-hand page is an illustration done in beautiful and precise pastels. These images are haunting -- many downright startling! You won't soon forget them.
Katherine never interprets her dreams for us. She just sets them down. This is good. It doesn't break the spell or descend into navel-gazing. Still, as you read through the book, you can see the evolution of one woman's intuition and level of self-knowlege.
The last few pages of the book are blank, though still creamy-ivory and decorated by discreet drawings of fish. This is to encourage the reader to start a dream journal. I myself found those pages WAY too pretty to mark up, but I did become inspired by her example. (I've kept a dream journal now for two years with an average of three dreams per week remembered and recorded.) I highly recommend this book!