Notebook Stories

Time for another look through the mailbag!

From BMT:

This might come under the “fell off the face of the Earth” dept.

In the early sixties, possibly 1960 or 1961 a loose leaf company (Mead?) marketed a failed loose leaf product named “Nifty.”
Instead of the conventional rings on the left side, it flipped up like a legal pad. There were two “pegs” that held the special two-hole (on the top) loose leaf paper as well as a convenient pencil compartment with a magnetic catch.

The TV commercial, in black & white of course showed a cartoon of kids on a school bus singing “…take Nifty to school with you…” with the bus sounding “honk-honk” on the horn. The verse was repeated two more times.

My mother bought me one, but the product flopped as fast as it came out, and I can’t find one word of the product anywhere on the net.

From Ayanna:

I purchased a fabulous sketchbook @ Blick Art Supplies in Pasadena,CA in June of this year. The notebook was a larger size than I usually use and I fell in love with it. The size is 9×12 and it is manufactured by Fabrica (Libretto Holdings in NYC) which seems to be a subsidiary of Benneton. It has a vinyl cover that you can slip business cards or photos into and 120 blank pages. This notebook is perfect for designing lines and collecting mood images etc. I have contacted Fabrica via email and no one has returned my calls. Have you ever seen this book before or do you have any information on where I can purchase another similiar style?

From Jordan:

My question lies with the movie “Shutter Island”. In the movie, Leo Dicaprio’s character uses a soft-cover notebook throughout to take notes, and I love it. The only problem is I am terrible at recognizing notebook brands, types etc. I was wondering if maybe you could help me, I would REALLY appreciate it.

Can anyone help find these notebooks?

Other readers have written just to say hello and share interesting links:

Check out Caribbean Princess’s blog for some great Filofax posts.

Katie introduces Gadanke, her line of creative writing journals with unique and inspiring prompts.

And Paul recommends this book: Tennessee Williams: Notebooks. It includes descriptions and photos of the notebooks themselves, something that often seems to be lacking in books about writers’ notebooks!

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