I figured this would happen at some point: Colorful and super pocket-size. The new Extra Small Notebooks. – Moleskine ® English. I guess the XS size planners were enough of a success that they decided to continue that format for regular notebooks. Plain and lined pages are available in 4 colors– but no black??
Here we have another super-addict whose love for notebooks extends to loving to shower them upon others! Anene is the author of a novel, Dancing with Gravity, and the blog Anene Writes. She offered to send me “a couple” of notebooks and look what showed up!
 
 It’s an amazing variety, from a simple Mead composition book to some tiny handmade notebooks bound in Guatemalan(?) textiles. There’s a small notebook that comes with a mirror inside and a chain so you can wear it around your neck. There are Levenger Circa system disks and refills. There is an elephant dung paper journal. Some of my favorites were the journal with multi-colored leaf pages, and the Barnes & Noble/Miquelrius co-branded notebook. They’re every size and shape and color and texture! Obviously Anene is a devoted collector. She says “I share your addiction. And if I send you my duplicates…I’ll be able to go out, guilt-free and buy more!”
I’ll be sharing some of Anene’s generosity with some lucky readers: since I’m starting to run out of room for all the wonderful gifts and samples people send me, I’m going to start doing more random giveaways, and the first one is today! The randomly selected winner will receive an assortment of up to 5 randomly selected notebooks, including some of these. If you like surprises, enter in any of these ways:
On Twitter, tweet something containing the words “random notebooks†and “@NotebookStories.â€
On Facebook, “like†the Notebook Stories page and post something containing the words “random notebooks†on my wall.
On your blog, post something containing the words “random notebooks†and “NotebookStories†and link back to this post.
And for those who don’t use the above options, you can also enter by leaving a comment on this post about why you need more notebooks!
The deadline for entry is Friday August 12 at 11:59PM, EST. Good luck everyone! And thank you again to Anene for sharing her addiction and her notebooks with all of us!
A reader named Lisa kindly sent me these Federal Supply Service notebooks after seeing my post about them having been featured on A Continuous Lean. It was very cool to get my hands on these, as I myself am not a federal employee, and therefore can’t buy them (at least, theoretically. There are places online where you seem to be able to get around that).
I’d love to know the full history behind these notebooks. They’ve obviously been the standard notebooks for military personal and other government workers for quite a while, though the design has evolved over time. I guess it makes sense for the military to have standard notebooks that fit in their uniform pockets, but what about other government workers? Are these the only notebooks that federal employees are authorized to purchase? Who actually has the contract to manufacture them? Are they made in the USA, despite their extremely low price?
As for the notebooks themselves, they have a nice, no-frills look to them. The green colors are quite nice. The quality of the construction seems solid, but it’s nothing fancy or fussy– don’t expect perfect edges and corners that line up 100% square. But that’s not the point: these aren’t meant to be design objects, they’re meant to be functional, and they’re meant not to cost taxpayers a fortune.
The pocket size notebook is taller and narrower than the standard pocket Moleskine format. It’s extremely flexible and forgiving– you can roll it up and then roll it back the other way, and it will end up pretty flat again. The pages have a bright blue line, heavier than what you’d find in most lined notebooks. The paper feels very soft and thirsty, and soaks up ink quite readily. I love the logo on the front cover– they’ve changed these pocket notebooks from hardcover to paperback over the years, but they have kept that old-fashioned “Memoranda.” On the back, you have the product number.
 
 The hardcover has sharp, square corners and the boards overhang the pages by quite a lot. On the back, there’s a barcode and the product number. The paper has the same soft feel to it, but the blue lines are much thinner than in the pocket notebook. If you’re a prolific journaler, these notebooks would be a good choice– they’re cheap and they’d look great all lined up on a shelf together. But you’d probably want to use a fine pen that would bleed through less.
Thanks again to Lisa for giving me the opportunity to review these!
The photo below is from an Chicago Tribune photo essay about the office of Bill Baker, the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill structural engineer who helped design the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai, currently the world’s tallest building.
He uses Moleskine notebooks and lead holders instead of pencils. There are more photos at the link, but barely any tantalizing little glimpses of the notebooks themselves. Very disappointing! But it’s still an interesting look at his workspace.
A fun article in this past weekend’s New York Times: Calendar Wars Pit Electronics Against Paper.
A few quotes from paper fans:
“I’ve got an , an , I’m on Twitter and Facebook and I’m talking on my BlackBerry now,†said Nelson George, a cultural critic, filmmaker and producer, in a phone interview. “But that’s enough. I’m an old-school paper calendar person.â€
Mr. George uses a datebook that fits in his back pocket. “People make comments about it,†he said. “They show me their little technology. But then they sit there tapping on their device, and by the time they’ve gone through all the log-ins and downloading, I’ve already flipped the page.â€
…
Elizabeth Beier, executive editor at St. Martin’s Press, has kept the same agenda since the mid-’80s, when she bought it in London at the Filofax boutique. “I have the standard size with a cover that used to be green and a handsome little snap that has since rotted off,†she said. “I feel like it’s lived with me so long that it’s earned its decrepitude.â€
…
“There’s absolutely nothing anyone could say to get me to switch,†said Dany Levy, founder of Daily Candy and a faithful Filofax keeper since high school. “People are shocked. Here I am a dot.com entrepreneur, I should be on the bleeding edge of hip technology, yet I use a form of scheduling that dates to the dinosaurs.â€
Dany Levy’s Filofax is below:
I have to say, I have my difficulties with paper when it comes to keeping a calendar. I have adoringly used many paper agendas over the years, including several years’ worth of Filofax calendars. But the arrival of the Palm Pilot coincided with my professional life revolving more and more around meetings and travel, and I found it much easier to keep track of with a handheld device that could sync with Outlook. Once I switched, I never really looked back. Now, I can easily have 15 or more meetings a week, plus personal appointments, birthdays and reminders. Having something beep on my computer or iPhone is often the only thing that saves me from forgetting to attend meetings, which are now almost always scheduled by electronic invitations. In some ways, I do miss being able to just flip through a date book, but that just wouldn’t be practical for me now. But I do keep a journal and daily log in my paper notebook, and I keep to-do lists both electronically and on paper– the split is more or less business tasks and long-term projects kept electronically, and personal, short-term tasks kept on paper.
This is probably the last Filofax calendar I ever used:
How about you? Are you all-paper? All-electronic? Some hybrid of the two?
I love catching people using notebooks on the subway. This man was drawing with a pencil in what I’m pretty sure was a Moleskine.
Okami tipped me off to this week’s addict, who is a notebook maker himself. Arnie Kim is the man behind Banditapple Carnets. (See Okami’s glowing review.) Based on the photo below, he must have done a lot of research about the competition!
See original image at My notebooks collection on DailyBooth.
Here’s Okami’s photo of the Banditapple Carnets. I’m dying to try them! So far they’re only available in Korea but they’re looking for a US distributor.
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.