The latest new development from the folks at Piccadilly: colored versions of their Essential Notebooks.
They’re only available in lined versions, at least so far. And I guess they’re only available through Piccadilly’s online store now that Borders is going out of business! I hope they’ll find some other retailers to work with soon…
Curt Roper has lived out a fantasy many of us have: he designed his perfect fountain pen friendly notebook, and manufactured it so he could not only have a lifetime supply, but sell it to others too! Let’s take a look at the sample Hitlist notebook he sent me:
I like the design– the cover is solid black except for the tasteful Hitlist logo, and a white strip at the edge with spaces for a subject and date. This is a great idea– since the notebook is staple-bound and doesn’t have a spine, this edge makes it easy to scan through a pile of them to find the notebook you’re looking for.
The other unique feature of this notebook is the little notch at the top of the front cover, which is meant to hold the clip of a pen in place so it won’t slide off.
Another claim of this notebook is that the cover stock is tear-resistant. I can’t say I’ve ever before tested a notebook by trying to tear the cover in half, but I did try pretty hard to rip this one, and produced nothing more than a little rough spot in the edge. This baby is tough.
On the inside front cover, you get a space to write your contact info, and a little blurb on the notebook’s back story.
I also noticed that the staples on the spine are perfectly aligned to the printing of the cover. Nice attention to detail. The edges are very cleanly cut, so it feels like a high-quality product.
The bright white, unlined paper inside also lives up to its promise of being extremely resistant to ink bleeding or showing through. It has a nice smooth, “hard” feel to it and all my pens worked beautifully. Even the dreaded Super Sharpie showed through very little. The paper is quite thick at 148g, so even at only 32 pages, the notebook bulks up in line with other cahier-type books that have higher page counts.
My only beef with this notebook is the taller page size– call me crazy, but I really prefer 3.5 x 5.5, rather than the slightly elongated 5.75 height of the Hitlist. But that’s just me.
Here’s the specs from the Hitlist website, which is currently the only place to buy these:
• Size: 3.5 x 5.75
• 32 blank pages of fountain pen friendly patented 148g archival quality acid free paper.
• Super tough tear resistant cover.
• Easy access subject and date area along spine.
• “CTF Dock†to show off your pen!
• Hitlist pocket notebooks come in packs of 5 held together by a long lasting silicone band.
They are made in Canada, so pricing is in Canadian dollars. At CAN$24.95 (plus shipping) for a 5-pack (with lower prices available for buying multiple packs), these are a bit more expensive than most– the closest comparison in terms of quality might be the Doane Paper utility notebooks, which are US$9.50-10.50 for a 3-pack. But the Hitlist notebook does turn things up a notch in terms of the paper. I think this is a great product, and I hope he is able to expand his distribution and product line– perhaps a hardcover version? Lined, gridded and dot grid versions? Other sizes and colors? Bring it on!
Every once in a while, I come across a story mentioning notebooks used by horrible people, in which they’ve written about horrible things– the journals of serial killers, terrorists, and Nazi war criminals, for example. I find it sad and disturbing that so many people who commit heinous acts fill page after page with writings about those acts. For most of us, notebooks are a place to make plans and remember things, and sometimes to talk ourselves through life’s dilemmas. I like to think of writing as therapeutic: a way to explore all our impulses and actions and find the right path. It’s hard to believe someone can engage in written self-examination and still choose a path of evil… but some do.
I usually just ignore these stories, but occasionally I wonder if the notebooks themselves might be of some historical interest. Ultimately, though, I don’t think there’s anything to celebrate in such notebooks, and out of respect for the victims of these crimes, I choose not to re-post any of those stories here.
Moleskine’s latest celebrity devotees:
Charlotte Rampling: “She writes regularly in Moleskine notebooks, jotting notes and reflections.”
via Forever femme fatale.
and
Heidi Klum:
“As anyone who knows me well will tell you, I love making lists. I think they are the best way to keep my life organized and I am never without a Moleskine Notebook.”
This week’s addict, who blogs at Not a Book Nerd, sent me this email about her notebook collection:
I’ve been journaling since my ninth birthday, nearly twelve years ago now. I have a ton of journals, and they are definitely my most prized possessions, though storage is becoming a problem.
You’ll see why storage could be a problem when you check out all these amazing photos! (Click on each for the full version, these are just thumbnail details.) That’s a lot of notebooks!
Thanks for sharing your fabulous collection, Taylor!
The About:Blank notebook is an interesting and pleasingly minimal notebook. From their website: “About:Blank is the pursuit of emptiness that is full of possibility,” which is a great way to describe notebooks in general. Let’s take a closer look at the sample the company sent me.
The sample I received came nicely wrapped in tissue paper, with a sticker thrown in as a bonus. The notebook itself was shrinkwrapped, with a slipped-in sheet that matches the cover material. This extra sheet is stamped with the About:Blank name, website address and the words “Made in Japan.” Once you get past that, the notebook itself is completely bare of any branding or information. It is literally blank, 100%.
My first impression of this notebook was how tight and precise it seems. Similar to the Zequenz notebooks, the edges are perfectly cut with exactly rounded, smooth corners and straight edges. The cover is a flexible heavier-weight paper in a double layer– the binding is one of the unique aspects of this notebook, which allows it to open quite flat without any tearing of the spine.
Inside, the pages have faint white-on-white lines on one side, which will be almost impossible to see in photos. Even looking at the notebook first-hand, you might almost miss them unless you view the page from the right angle. The paper is of a substantial weight– not quite as heavy as Moleskine’s heavyweight sketchbook paper, but thicker than most other notebooks I’ve tried. According to the website, the paper weight is 178g. Both the cover and the paper have a very pleasing smooth matte texture. Another attribute the company’s website mentions is that pages can be torn out cleanly without loosening other pages. I did try tearing out one page of mine– for about the first centimeter, it tore on a very straight, clean line, but beyond that the edge came out very raggedly. I’d rather see them add micro-perforation if they’re going to tout that feature.
In my pen tests, the paper performs very well– much better than average on show-through and bleed-through. The feel of it is very smooth when you’re writing. The fountain pen I used almost seemed to bead up on it, although I found that my Super Sharpie seemed to be soaked up rather thirstily, with the edges feathering out a bit. But for standard rollerball pens, it’s a dream to write on– very smooth and sharp. My pH pen confirms that the paper is acid-free.
It would be interesting to see if this notebook would still work with a heavier, stiffer cover– the cover stock is thin enough that it will curl open slightly once the notebook is being used, thereby spoiling those precise, square edges a bit. I’d also love to see a version of this notebook in a smaller, pocket size– right now, only a 106 x 178 x 12 mm (approx. 4 x 7 x .5 inches) version is available, in black, red, or white. It would fit into a man’s jacket pocket, but probably not a jeans pocket. (Shown below next to a pocket size Moleskine for comparison.)
The About:Blank notebook is available in various shops in Europe and Asia, mostly in Japan. For US customers, you can buy online here, where the notebook is currently marked down from $19.98 to $14.98. The regular pricing is on the high side for a notebook of this size, but you’re definitely getting better than average quality for your money, and supporting an independent manufacturer who is offering a nice alternative to other notebooks on the market.
Read more at the company’s website: About Blank :: notebook.
At the Guardian website, Steven Poole takes a look at a Leuchtturm notebook:
The most bruited feature of the Leuchtturm, meanwhile, one to which a circular sticker on the cellophane packaging is devoted, is that the paper is “ink proof”. They are not claiming that the mere addition of ink to the pages causes all other notebooks spontaneously to self-destruct; but that you can use a fountain pen and the ink won’t “bleed through” to the next page. In the spirit of scientific notebook-reviewing duty, I conducted a robust experiment. With a Rotring ArtPen Sketch EF (a bit like a fountain pen), loaded with sepia ink, I drew a grumpy man in both the Leuchtturm and the Moleskine. No bleed-through in either. Then, with a Rotring Tikky Graphic 0.3 (black ink), I drew a surprised sheep in each notebook. FAIL! The sheep’s solid-black face and legs were too much: a couple of spots of black ink bled through onto the next page of both notebooks. So I am, sadly, unable to report that the Leuchtturm is clearly superior in this regard.
Read more at Notes on notebooks | Books | guardian.co.uk.
I wish this could have been me:
I GOT a real thrill in December 1999 in the Reading Room of the Morgan Library in New York when the librarian, Sylvie Merian, brought me, after I had completed an application with a letter of reference and a photo ID, the first, oldest notebook of Isaac Newton. First I was required to study a microfilm version. There followed a certain amount of appropriate pomp. The notebook was lifted from a blue cloth drop-spine box and laid on a special padded stand. I was struck by how impossibly tiny it was — 58 leaves bound in vellum, just 2 3/4 inches wide, half the size I would have guessed from the enlarged microfilm images. There was his name, “Isacus Newton,†proudly inscribed by the 17-year-old with his quill, and the date, 1659.
From an article by James Gleick: Books and Other Fetish Objects – NYTimes.com.
Here’s a blogger sharing a concern of many buyers of upscale notebooks:
What should I write in here? I just spent $10 on this notebook – I’m not going to waste the space on things that don’t count.
I have heard this particular concern from countless Moleskine converts. Because the books are so nice (yes, I love the silky paper and the magic secret pocket, too), there’s a natural tendency to try and protect them from the random musings of our brains.
Stop that! Stop it RIGHT NOW!
You heard me, folks. The Moleskine notebook is awesome. It’s beautiful. It’s $10. But above all else: it’s for you to write in – whatever that may yield.
The reason that we spend $10 on nice notebooks is that they entice us to write. Do so, and do so with reckless abandon. After all, you spend more than $10 on lunch. Fill that puppy up, and get that melon empty.
Read more at Contextual Bias » Blog Archive » The Great Moleskine Dilemma.
This week’s addict emailed me a link to a post about her notebook addiction, featuring these photos:
Believe it or not, this is only my journal collection for the past ten years. My mother has my high school and college journals at home. Basically, my journals are just a week by week account of my life, a legacy of sorts to leave my family. As I get older, I find myself writing more about my philosophies and views on the world as well as the day to day stuff; as I have evolved, so have my journals…
I love the variety in this collection, which Jennie told me includes EcoJot, Miquelrius, and many more. See Jennie’s blog for larger versions of these photos and more information on how she uses them. (And also this related post poking fun at Moleskines!)
Thanks again, Jennie!
