"WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1961 — This is my 50th birthday. Today I became a half-century old in a universe five billion years old. I exist on a planet of 197 million square miles in a single galaxy amid billions of galaxies — a dot in space, a nanosecond in time.

"Obviously, it is not the slightest importance whether I pause to evaluate my life, but so strong is the ego of this atom I feel impelled to do so."

And so it begins. More than 550 pages of daily observation, reflection, joy, sadness, shock, humor and even well-crafted sketches, all between the covers of "A Diary of The Century, Tales from America's Greatest Diarist."

Edward Robb Ellis never hesitated to expose his ego, as can be seen in his opening remarks in his book, a day-to-day picture of his life from 1927 to 1995, all selections from the 22 million words he put on paper until he died in 1998 at age 87 in New York.

On the famous ladder, Edward is not on the upper rungs. And I cannot say I treasure his book because of all the fascinating things he did and the life he had.

Yes, those factors do come into play because he was a newspaperman. That would interest me, of course. He loved chasing stories (and seeing his byline) and rubbing elbows with the rich and famous. Telling "war stories" is part of the game when writing a biography. But I am not comfortable calling his book a biography.

I think Eddie would agree. What he recorded was his life, day by day. At the end of the day, what can you say — every day? Biographies are about accomplishments and personal struggle and drama and dancing with history. They are not about every day.

Eddie didn't climb a mountain every day. He didn't save lives every day. You didn't win awards every day. What Edward Ellis has done, however, is show that every day is a prize. Every day offers a view, a moment, a thought, an experience, a touch, a smell, a surprise, an opportunity won ... or lost.

All of this is pretty private, unless you do what Eddie did and put it on paper and share it.

That's a diary. And what makes it rewarding is not so much events or tracks through the day, but the thoughts they provoke, watching a human being grow and evolve over years — all absorbed from the outside peering in.

Of all the books I have read, none have more passages marked by me than this one. What Eddie had to say is what leashed me to this book. How he felt about his day, his life, made me think more about my own life.

In his own words, Eddie explained one of the reasons he never stopped writing his diary: "It has taught me that one way to find the truth is to tell the truth."

He goes on, "... a diarist is a writer who watches himself watching himself. If I can learn to know myself well, then I'll be able to know others as well. ... Human beings are more alike than different. By paying close attention to whatever I feel and think, I can learn what others feel and think."

Not everything Ellis writes is deep and thoughtful or probing. That's the beauty. He records his first shave, his first kiss, little pieces of his day. On the day of the Wall Street crash that triggered the Great Depression, his mind was on how much he hated studying Spanish. He was 18 years old.

Eddie's shows how a diary opens a window overlooking the movement of time as it shapes lives.

Ellis respected Ernest Hemingway and highlighted this quote from the author's book "The Snows of Kilimanjaro":

"There was so much to write. He had seen the world change; not just the events, although he had seen many of them and had watched the people, but he had seen the subtler change and he could remember how the people were at different times. He had been in it and he had watched it and it was his duty to write of it."

Ellis made a plea, saying it was " ... the only original idea I've ever had." He called for creation of an American Diary Repository.

I share his plea today:

"While every civilized nation has libraries and archives and museums, none has a central clearinghouse for the preservation and use of the diaries written by its people.

"As this nation enters its third century, we would do well to gather under one roof an untapped body of Americana — the life stories of all sorts of men and women as told in their journals.

" ... Honest writing is more precious than precious writing."

• LONNY CAIN is Managing Editor of The Times. To share thoughts, comments or ideas, please call 815-431-4041 or e-mail lonnyc@mywebtimes.com or attach a comment to this column on our Web site. You are also welcome to stop by or mail to The Times, 110 W. Jefferson St., Ottawa, IL 61350.