“I bought ten blue notebooks from Walmart and I have filled five of them so far. It’s not OCD or anything, I’m just prepared in case it turns out that it’s the blue notebook doing all the work.”

I’ve been meaning to check out the notebook offerings at WalMart… this has given me yet another reason to do so.

From Do Some Damage: Writing Without a Net.

The first few pictures were taken at McNally Jackson Bookstore in the SoHo/NoLIta area of NYC. It’s a fabulous bookstore, and they have a very eclectic little stationery section too.

I wish I’d bought this first one, I love the look of the cover.

It’s hard to tell, but that’s a Leuchtturm notebook below.

Another attractive cover… I love white birch trees in real life, and I guess I like them on notebooks too.

A Moleskine lookalike branded as a travel journal from Rick Steves.

The photos below are from Kinokuniya Bookstore in midtown, right across from Bryant Park. I went there before Christmas and was in total overload at the shelves and shelves of cool Japanese notebooks, pens, stickers and other assorted items.

If you like the charmingly random use of English sometimes found on Japanese products, then you’ll love the notebook below. The cover reads “Guildford is the most charming and lovely town in Surrey. It has maintained its attractive rural villages, riverside walks, gardens, and Tudor architectures.”

I didn’t take good notes on all the brands I found in either place, but I bought a couple of things at Kinokuniya that I’ll review soon. In the meantime, I highly recommend a visit to both shops if you happen to be in New York!

Via Postalco Jotter | Cool Material.

I think I want the one with phrases to use in meetings, to remind me there’s more to life than leveraging my core competencies.

They’re only $4 each, here.
Via Hybrid Home Notebooks – Super7 Blog.

These 4×3 1/8-inch journals are filled with 48 gridded / perforated sheets, making them perfect for notes on-the-go. And with their five slip pockets and elastic band for security, they’re also a good hiding placce for those secret love notes.

They’re only $5 at the GAMA-GO website.

Via GAMA-GO’s ‘Pocket Journals’ | Collect3d.

Translating the site is a little dicey– you’ll get descriptions like this:

High quality, elegant and classic – a classic collection of notebooks Herlitz you will always make the right impression. High coverage “under the skin”, a beautiful cream-colored paper, fixing the gum and inner pocket converts this notebook into a bright, comfortable accessory.

Still, any notebook I don’t have in my collection is always fun to at least look at!

For those who cringe at the thought of cool old records being re-purposed this way, here’s a note from the makers at Vinyl Collective, “a community for vinyl collectors” where you can buy vinyl records and other accessories:

We only make notebooks from Warped vinyl that was returned to us. We don’t like the idea of taking a perfectly good record and turn it into a notebook.

I think making notebooks is a great way to recycle things!
Find out more at Vinyl Collective.

Here’s the front and back cover. The removable paper band is made of a translucent vellum paper.

The back view provides the first departure from the standard Moleskine set of features– the elastic band attaches in the middle of the notebook instead of at the top and bottom

As you can see from the next photo, there is quite a large overhang of the cover beyond the paper.

The outside dimensions of the notebook are about the same as a Moleskine, but the pages inside are much smaller.

When you open the notebook, that elastic starts to seem really weird– the way it’s attached leaves it hanging quite loose.

At first I thought it might have been made that way so you’d have the option of wrapping it around sideways like a Ciak or Piccadilly Primo journal, but it’s too loose to work that way.

Here’s a closeup of the cover material– it’s hard to see, but it has an unusual texture, not the usual vaguely leather-ish feel. The closest thing I can compare it to would be the surface of a cinder block, or a stucco wall!

The inside front cover is blank:

But when you turn to the first page, there’s the space for writing your info, on the inside of the endpaper. The binding is a bit tight and the notebook doesn’t open flat very easily.

There’s no pocket in the back, just a logo.

So how about the paper? I’m sorry to say that it’s quite disappointing. It’s quite thin and showed some of the worst bleed-through I’ve seen in any notebook I’ve reviewed:

I have to say that I found this notebook very disappointing overall. The weird elastic and small, skimpy pages just bothered me. The price for these notebooks on Amazon is currently $5.49 (or $8-12 for a larger size), though I think it was about a dollar less when I bought mine. Unfortunately, I don’t think they’re even worth that much– Piccadilly’s notebooks cost less at Borders and are far superior in quality. The only upside to these might be the color and texture of the cover, but that’s a matter of taste.

Specs:

96 lined pages

132 x 85mm

Made in Malaysia

Hand Book Artist Journal Value Packs

This may be another case of over-the-top marketing for a notebook, as evidenced by the photos above and this description:

“While the Little Black Book has gained notoriety as the pocket companion of playboys with more show than substance, its a little known fact that throughout history true gentlemen have always carried a Little Blue Book to capture fleeting moments of inspiration and genius, wherever or whenever they may be.”

Uh-huh, and true gentlemen also probably know when to put an apostrophe in “it’s” and a hyphen in “little-known.” But getting past all that, I have to say that I LOVE the fact that it’s blue. Not fluorescent blue, not turquoise blue, but a gorgeous, old-fashioned navy blue, just like the pocketbook your grandmother took to her DAR luncheons. (Actually, they should make a version for women and call it the “Grandma’s DAR Pocketbook Journal,” or something like that, to appeal to gentlewomen!)

In all other details, it’s pretty standard: 9×14 cm size, ribbon marker, elastic closure, lined pages, interior pocket, embossed logo on back, and a place to write your name on the inside, with the header “This notebook belongs to a Forgetful Gentleman.” The cover is said to be made of “PU Leather.” While my inner third-grader wants to claim they mean it’s “pee-eww” smelly, stinky leather, my online research uncovered this definition:

Bicast leather (also known as bycast leather, split leather or PU leather) is a split leather with a layer of polyurethane applied to the surface and then embossed…. The use of the term ‘leather’ in relation to this bicast treatment is considered a misrepresentation and therefore not permitted in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Furniture made with bicast exhibits none of the characteristics associated with genuine leather; it will not develop a patina or suppleness nor otherwise “improve with age”. With constant use the polyurethane layer will crack and split free of its backing.

I’m glad I looked this up, as I’d wondered about the “bonded leather” cover of the Markings notebook — sounds like a similar process of making a cheap, leather-like material that has enough leather content to allow it to be called “leather,” at least in some countries.

The Little Blue Notebook is $12.00 plus $5.95 shipping (within the continental US) for up to 4 notebooks. At 5, the shipping increases to $12.95. At 13, it’s $24.95. At 17, it’s $32.95. I didn’t test all the other quantities beyond that, so suffice it to say that this will not be the cheapest notebook you’ve ever purchased, nor will it be the most expensive. Which seems very gentlemanly to me.