Category Archives: Travel Notebooks

Review: Kolo Essex Travel Book

The Kolo Essex Travel Book is an interesting hybrid of a Moleskine-type notebook and a Filofax. From the outside, it looks a lot like a Moleskine, but with some important differences. The binding is cloth, with a window in which you can insert your own image. An elastic band holds it shut. On the back, … Continue reading Review: Kolo Essex Travel Book

Notebooks in Istanbul

Not long ago, I traveled to Istanbul for a vacation. I was of course excited to see what kinds of notebooks I might find there! The only Turkish brand of notebooks I’d ever heard of was Arwey, but oddly enough, I didn’t spot a single Arwey notebook on my trip. I did see some other … Continue reading Notebooks in Istanbul

A Turkish Grandmother’s Notebook

I’ve been reading Orhan Pamuk’s fascinating book Istanbul: Memories and the City. It’s an interesting mix of city history and personal memoir, and here’s a passage I had to share: “My grandmother always kept with her a slim leather-bound notebook in which she wrote something every day. This notebook, in which she recorded bills, memories, … Continue reading A Turkish Grandmother’s Notebook

The Manly Tradition of the Pocket Notebook

The Art of Manliness blog muses on the long tradition of keeping a notebook: The idea of carrying around a pocket notebook has become quite popular these last few years, revived by the introduction of the current incarnation of the “Moleskine” into the market. It’s become so popular that I’m afraid it has come to … Continue reading The Manly Tradition of the Pocket Notebook

Urban Sketchers

I’m a longtime fan of the Urban Sketchers website. Small notebooks aren’t necessarily the only way to do urban sketches, but they’re probably the most practical and frequent tool, so the site offers lots of notebook eye-candy, as well as some great art. Here are a few recent favorites: The site has also organized an … Continue reading Urban Sketchers

Kids Who Love Notebooks

I always love coming across stories about kids using notebooks: My son commented that he needed more notebooks. I asked him why. Didn’t he have several notebooks that weren’t full? Yes, he said, but one was for thoughts on his school work, and the second was about the environment, and the third one was for … Continue reading Kids Who Love Notebooks

How to Turn Your Notebook Into a “Mental Swiss-Army Knife”

Here’s an interesting topic on Ask MetaFilter: I have a graph-ruled Moleskine that is begging to be turned into a compendium of obscure, fascinating, and perhaps occasionally useful reference material. Some of the things I want to put in there are Rubik’s Cube algorithms, keys to reading non-Latin alphabets, some simple math formulas (Trachtenberg math, … Continue reading How to Turn Your Notebook Into a “Mental Swiss-Army Knife”