A Pillow Book

I'm reading a book by Philip Lopate called To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction.

He begins his chapter on the importance of keeping writing notebooks:

"The tenth-century Japanese court lady Sei Shonagon kept a writer's notebook in which she recorded a miscellaneous catchall of things, charming and annoying, rhapsodic descriptions of nature, odd facts, and malicious observations of her countrymen.  She claimed to be chagrined when it was discovered and read, though a part of her must at least subconsciously have had readers in mind all along.  Now considered an indispensable classic, Shonagon's Pillow Book was also, in a sense, the ancestor of the modern blog."

Imagine--these writings are now over ten thousand years old and college students and others still enjoy reading her musings about her life.

What was she reading?  What was it like being a court lady?  What were her private "malicious" observations about her countrymen?  I've just ordered a copy--I'll let you know more when it arrives.