First of all, I know some people are bothered that anyone would tear apart an old book to turn it into something else, but I’d like to think that these perhaps weren’t in good enough shape to still be read. As the insert in each journal tells you, the people who make these are “artists and book lovers who believe in sustainable business practices.”

Each journal is made from the front and back cover of a book, with a few pages of the interiors scattered inside as dividers. This leads to some amusing serendipitous discoveries such as the pages below.

I also loved a section in the Boston School Kitchen Text-Book which explains why all young women should learn to cook:

“No matter how high her social position may be, no girl is sure of retaining it through life. Though in her youthful conceit she may boast of never scrubbing a floor, or washing a dish, and may think it commendable to be ignorant of the mysteries of the kitchen, the time may come when she will have harder work than this to do, and will be thankful if tehre is one thing she can do well, even if it be but the washing of dishes or the cooking of wholesome food. And if her position should chance to be that of a director of such work, rather than a doer of it, this practical knowledge will be even more valuable.”

Needless to say, in 1887 there was no need to mention that any male might also want such knowledge!

The book cover edges are sawed off in a sharp, straight edge, but there is nothing finishing off the edge to prevent it from fraying. The spiral binding is plastic.

The interior pages are quite a bit smaller than the cover, leading to a large cover overhang, which always gets on my nerves, though I know other people prefer it that way.

The paper inside is smooth and bright white, and is acid-free. All my usual pens performed nicely on it, with a soft pencil giving a nice opaque black very easily. Show-through was about average, and only the Super Sharpie and Accu-Liner bled through, which is pretty typical.

These journals would make a nice gift for any book lover. The variety of covers they use guarantees there’s something for pretty much anyone, and the hard covers will be quite durable, as some of the books are old textbooks or library editions designed to be mauled by children. Each journal is unique, so the sizes and designs vary. The prices are around $13-14 for most styles I looked at on the website.

Thanks to the very generous assortment of samples I received, we’re going to have a mother of a giveaway this time!

I’ll select three random winners from entries submitted as follows, and each winner will receive two journals:

On Twitter, tweet something containing “Book Journals” and follow “@exlibrisanon” and “@NotebookStories.”

On Facebook, “like” the  Notebook Stories page and the Ex Libris Anonymous page, and post something containing the words “Book Journals” on my wall.

On your blog, post something containing the words “Ex Libris Anonymous Book Journals” and “NotebookStories” and link back to this post.

The deadline for entry is Friday Feb. 3 at 11:59PM, EST. Good luck everyone!

Everything I’ve ever written was composed in notebooks first. I have hundreds of them filled with my scribbles tucked away in boxes. I also buy them obsessively, so I probably have just as many empty notebooks lying around the house ready and waiting to be filled. I find that writing longhand I can enter a zone of comfort I find hard to achieve when sitting in front of a screen – I find typing annoying, if I’m honest, not the mechanics of it, but the sound. The constant tap-tap-tap-tap on the keyboard reminds me of all the offices I’ve worked in. The sound bores into me, it fills me with an anxiety I could do without. I feel like I’m signing off invoices rather than writing my next novel. Writing longhand is a whole different feeling. For a start, I can take my notepads and pens everywhere I go; which means I can write anywhere I want, when I want. This is good for me as my writing comes to me in fits rather than prolonged spells. Only when my work is finished in longhand do I transfer it to a computer, editing as I type up. I find this part of my writing process the least enjoyable.

Read more at Why creative writing is better with a pen | Books | guardian.co.uk.

So here it is:

I really do love the design of these notebooks. It’s such a great idea to take Penguin’s iconic look and classic novels and make them the covers of notebooks. Unfortunately, to truly replicate the proportions of the original books, the notebooks have to be a bit taller than my favorite height to width ratio. That’s my own personal preference and others may not have a problem with it… but unfortunately, there’s a few other issues with this notebook that will keep it from being something I ever actually use.

First of all, the binding is quite stiff– it does not easily lie flat. Then there’s the paper, which feels great with the usual gel ink rollerball pens I use, but some other pens behaved very strangely. My Pigma Brush pen seemed to somehow resist the paper– it goes on looking greyish instead of the opaque black it shows on other papers. My Pilot Varsity fountain pen also seemed to bead up. Otherwise, showthrough and bleed-through were about average, or maybe a little worse than average.

Otherwise, the notebook didn’t have too many surprises– the cardboard cover is sturdy, with sharply squared-off corners. There’s a ribbon marker and back pocket. The ribbon marker is sealed at the end so it won’t fray, which is a nice touch, but in my sample, it must have been tucked in before the end had completely dried and it was a bit stuck to the pages. I also wondered why they chose to use a red ribbon on a notebook that is otherwise all orange and black. Another nice touch is that the space on the inside front cover where you write your contact info is headed “Ex Libris.”

Bottom line: this is a great looking notebook that would make a nice gift for any booklover. But if you’re really picky about how it actually performs, it might not be your best choice.

Yoko Nakamuta, who knows how much some urban sketchers love their Moleskines, invited me to write about Urban Sketchers for his book, “61 ways to put your life into a Moleskine,” which was just published last month in Japan by Diamond Publishing (avaible on Amazon Japan.)

Yoko, the administrator of Moleskinerie Japan, authored the book with fellow Moleskine fans Masatake Hori and Hiroki Takaya. Yoko wrote that “Our book tells not only how to use notebooks and customize them, but also how users enjoy and think their lives with their notebooks. We hope that our readers will find out their own curiosity, charm points, happiness, fun of working and wonder of the world through a black notebook.”

Read more, including the original English version of the interview printed in the book, at the sketch journalist: 61 ways to put your life into a Moleskine.

I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve read some of the author’s other work and loved it.

I knew about some of these, but others were a surprise! Time to go back and study Shakespeare, I guess!
Read more at Things We Say Today And Owe To Shakespeare : The Two-Way : NPR.

Read more about the book in this review: Drawn In: A Peek Inside Favorite Artists’ Private Sketchbooks – Maria Popova – Life – The Atlantic.

With the subtitle “Why the Market No Longer Favours the Mainstream,” the book poses the argument that companies can no longer try to be all things to all people, and that success will be found by defining one’s niche and focusing on it, as well as learning how to exploit the enthusiasm of a niche audience. The author uses a number of companies as examples of success and failure, though I thought they were sometimes used a bit too self-reinforcingly– the now-defunct Woolworth’s is cited as an example of the irrelevance and failure of the all-purpose general store, but the author talks briefly about Wal-Mart without really explaining how their decidedly un-niche-y, very mainstream success fits into his thesis. Woolworth’s wasn’t killed by specialist boutiques, it was killed by suburban stores like Wal-Mart doing a bigger, better job of offering something for everyone and drawing shoppers away from “Main Street” downtown shopping areas.

But Harkin gives a very compelling example in his discussion of the Gap, whose sales have declined as they’ve struggled to figure out who their target customers are, vs. the “if you’re over 30, stay away” approach of Abercrombie & Fitch. Starbucks is another interesting example– they got their start by targeting the niche of coffee snobs vs. the mainstream Maxwell House drinkers, but now that they’ve become a mainstream coffee behemoth, they’ve had some struggles with their identity and profitability, though I think they’d still be considered a success by any measure. I think my issue here is that the subtitle of the book suggests that mainstream= loser and niche=winner, which is misleading (and the content of the book is certainly more nuanced). Moleskine is certainly a fantastic example of a niche success, but that doesn’t mean that Mead is a mainstream failure. Same with Apple vs. Windows (and I have to note that although Apple is mentioned on the cover, the coverage of the company consists of one brief mention 3 pages away from the end of the book).

Let’s get away from the question of winners vs. losers: the book does give a lot of great ideas and inspiration for how niche-oriented businesses can succeed. The Moleskine part of the book comes in a chapter about people “sorting themselves into flocks.” Moleskine is the perfect example of envisioning a product that would appeal to a certain type of person– a type that can’t be linked to any particular demographic group, but rather to a shared mindset. Instead of marketing a generic notebook for generic users, Moleskine linked their product to a rather amorphous idea of art, travel and European culture– and then they let their users run with it. The product itself hit a sweet spot in terms of size, aesthetics, quality and paper options, and the “history” and “identity” behind the brand clicked with how a certain kind of people wanted to define themselves as creative, cosmopolitan, and “different.” The internet then allowed the fans to build communities like the Moleskinerie blog and Flickr groups (and the blog you are now reading). Moleskine subtly helped these grow and flourish but the “fans-speaking-to-fans” aspect made it feel like a club people wanted to join. (What’s not covered in the book is that as Moleskine has grown as a company, they’ve gotten more corporate about managing their brand, with draconian policies on using the trademarked Moleskine name on fan websites, and by taking over the Moleskinerie blog and arguably ruining it in the process.)

And as for the notebooks themselves, here’s my favorite quote from the book:

In [1996], Modo & Modo trademarked their brand as Moleskine (with a capital ‘M’) and located a manufacturer located in China capable of assembling notebooks to their detailed design specification. The first Moleskine notebooks arrived from China to be hand-finished in Milan in 1997: that year Modo & Modo sold five thousand of them to their Italian distributors, and the following year it shifted thirty thousand.

There you have it, in case there was any doubt that Moleskine notebooks were ALWAYS made in China. Maria Sebregondi and Francesco Franceschi of Moleskine were interviewed for Harkin’s book, so this is pretty much from the horse’s mouth. It’s fascinating to me that the user community they’ve cultivated is so passionate about the product and invested it its mythology that many of them are convinced that Moleskines used to be made in Europe, and “aren’t as good any more now that they’re made in China.” And there’s Harkin’s message again– as Moleskine approaches more “mainstream” status selling tens of millions of notebooks a year, they can’t control their production quality quite as closely, their core audience may become disillusioned, and the marketing magic might begin to fade. Moleskine already seems like a mainstream Goliath when you look at upstart challengers like Field Notes or Doane Paper who are carving out their own even smaller niche.

There’s lots more food for thought in this book, with examples from all sorts of industries. It’s an entertaining read, and I found myself scribbling lots of notes in the margins. Though it was published in the UK, most of the companies cited are American (and global), so it’s very relevant for anyone with an interest in business and marketing. If you’re not in the UK, Amazon is probably your best bet for finding a copy.

From Carol:

You probably already know about this—the Voynich manuscript—but I was looking at some cool pictures on National Geographic and thinking about how, really, it’s just someone’s very beautiful notebook!

And I’ve crossed the line into custom-made—this week Staples is making three wire-o-bound graph paper notebooks in a specific size to match the planner I use, and I can’t wait to get them.  Wondering if any other readers have tried this.  I looked long and hard online for a way to order custom notebooks (picturing a nice “build-your-own” website with a wide choice of paper, covers, sizes, bindings, pockets etc.) but no luck.

I had never heard of the Voynich manuscript– what a cool find! As for custom notebooks, I have tried to make some custom notebooks, and alter notebooks I’ve purchased in various ways over the years. I’ve heard of other people contacting printers to have notebooks made to their own specifications, sometimes just for their own use and sometimes to sell (I’ll be reviewing one such project soon.) Anyone else have stories to share?

From Dave, an interesting article he describes as “Endorsing the personalization of one’s books and the enhancement of the
reading experience through marginalia.” I remember reading this article, which I’m sure will bring out passionate disagreement among book lovers– the author argues that you should use the book you’re reading as almost a notebook, jotting your thoughts and reactions in the margins. But some people hate to mess up their books! I’ve definitely done it both ways myself, but I tend to prefer to write about books in my notebooks. How about you?

And Alex shared a link to an Etsy shop called Cleverhands, who make a variety of straps to hold pens onto notebooks. They also make some notebooks too!

Thank you loyal readers and contributors! Keep ‘em coming (and I’ll keep being backlogged for months)!