A fun Washington Post article by Josephine Wolff (see also this post about her favorite notebooks), about the many books now available on various methods of journaling and how to use notebooks.
I cannot stop buying books about how to write in notebooks. It’s not that I require instructions. I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, long enough that I don’t need anyone else’s system: I’ve got 50 of my own. And yet, I’m still hopelessly, incurably obsessed with the notebook gurus. I am transfixed by this community of enthusiasts who have made careers out of telling poor, lost, notebook-less souls how to take control of their lives by putting pen to paper. These are people who’ve developed systems that help you structure your time, priorities and goals, often by means of elaborately structured principles and rules.
The end of the year is always a fun time to think about daily carry notebook choices– your current year diary or planner is looking nicely worn in, and you’re itching to start a new one! This year, I’m also getting close to needing to swap out my daily notebook/journal and daily carry sketchbook. Here’s a look at all the notebooks I’m using more or less on a daily basis (top row), and what I will or might use next (below).
My 2019 Nolty Gold diary/planner will be replaced with the exact same model for 2020. I use this for jotting appointments, food and exercise, habit tracking, to-do and shopping lists, and other lists.
My daily carry sketchbook is almost always a Moleskine sketchbook, from my stash of older stock. I have other brands that I also like and every once in a while will swap one in for a different experience. I might try using a HandBook Journal again for a change. Or not. We’ll see.
I usually use a squared Moleskine for daily journaling and note-taking. For the past couple of months, I’ve been using one of my Moleskine Zoom notebooks with squared pages. I’m thinking of using one of my dotted Bindewerk Linen Journals next. The fountain pen friendly paper and cloth cover are really enjoyable.
For 2019, I’ve been using another Nolty diary, in a smaller passport notebook size, as a sort of image diary or scrapbook, pasting in some image that caught my eye each week. For 2020, I may use a larger Nolty, or maybe another small one that has a different page layout.
I’ve been using a WritersBlok stitched pocket notebook for taking notes in my French class. I have a ton of Field Notes, Moleskine Cahier, and other similar single signature notebooks that I can draw on for this purpose, but might use the Doane PaperUtility Notebook next.
I do a lot of notebook browsing on Amazon, and therefore see a ton of sponsored product recommendations for notebooks. Most of them are not that interesting. But the Taotree Notebook started popping up a lot a few months ago and I was intrigued. So many of the generic notebooks you see on Amazon only have lined pages, or they only offer an A5 size, but Taotree offered a 9x14cm dot-grid notebook. With 120 GSM paper! At the time I ordered, there was a promotional price of only $6.99 for a 2-pack, which is just insane. How could I not buy them?! But would the quality deliver? Read on…
The notebooks arrive shrinkwrapped, but without any external branding materials. I’m assuming they aren’t sold in physical stores anywhere, so it isn’t needed, and that helps them keep the price down. The cover is a plain black faux-leather with a pleasant soft feel. The only logo is a subtle stamped brand name on the back cover.
It is thicker than a Moleskine cover, but not quite as chunky as a RhodiaWebnotebook. The cover overhang is nice and small on the top and bottom, but a bit wider at the opening edge. On one of the notebooks I received, the back edge overhang was slightly wider, due to the page block being glued in with the spine at a slight angle, but otherwise everything was even and square.
The construction seems solid– I flexed the covers back and forth more than I usually do and the page block seemed very stable and securely attached. The other notebook in my 2-pack had no asymmetry at all, and the only tiny defect I could find was that there was a little extra glue in the spine that caused the cover to stick down instead of flexing freely. I was able to dislodge this easily without damaging anything. Bottom line, their quality control seems to be as good or better than many more expensive brands.
The Taotree notebook opens nice and flat. The endpapers are totally plain. In addition to the standard ribbon marker, elastic closure (of the perfect length and tension for tucking into the back cover if you want it out of the way) and expanding back pocket with cloth-reinforced sides, there is a pen loop attached to the back cover. For me, this is actually a downside, as I personally don’t like pen loops. But it was really easy to just cut the pen loop off with some sharp pointy scissors. The threads pulled out easily, so I am left with some small holes on the back cover, but that bothers me way less than the pen loop. I’ll also need to inject a little glue to hold down the endpaper where the pen loop was, as it looks a bit loose now, but that is also no big deal.
Inside, you get 9 stitched signatures for a total of 144 pages (72 sheets). As noted above it is 120 GSM dot grid, in a cooler/brighter white shade than the somewhat creamy color of Moleskine paper. It is super smooth and absolutely luscious to write on. I’ve noticed in some dot grid or lined notebooks that the dots or lines can resist certain inks, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with the Taotree notebook.
It has some of the best performance I’ve seen on bleed-through and show-through, even when I was pressing down hard with a flexible nib. The only disappointment with the paper was some very slight feathering with some fountain pens and a couple of other wet rollerball pens. But I would definitely call this a fountain pen friendly notebook.
I don’t always test fountain pen drying times but I gave it a whirl on the Taotree and results seemed pretty good– the TWSBI Eco with Diamine ink took the longest to dry at 15 seconds, but the Pilot Justus/Sailor ink was dry at 5 seconds. Even Apache Sunset ink, which often takes the longest to try, stopped smearing by 10-15 seconds.
This is really a great little notebook, and the value is amazing. The Taotree notebook offers great paper and solid construction at less than half the price of the competition. The $6.99 price that I was able to snag is no longer in effect as of this writing– a 2-pack is currently $12.49$9.99 which is still incredible for this quality, and at least of of writing this, I’m seeing a 10% off coupon code on the lined 2-packs, and a $2 off coupon code on the dot-grid 2-packs (coupon code seems to be gone). And there is one other thing that makes the Taotree notebook a no-brainer: they offer a 90-day warranty. If you don’t like the notebook, they will give you a refund. I have no need to put that to the test, but the overwhelmingly positive Amazon reviews seem to indicate that customers are happy with the notebooks or the customer service, or both. I haven’t used the Taotree notebook as a daily carry yet, but I know I will someday. If daily usage changes my strong “buy this!” recommendation, I will post an update!
Other than the small commission I earn on purchases through these Amazon links, I have not been compensated for this review in any way, and I purchased these samples with my own money.
There’s an interesting exhibition of Turner’s watercolors at the Mystic Seaport Museum in CT. Of course, browsing in the museum shop is always half the fun, and I had a chance to flip through a book of Turner Sketchbooks:
There were no intact Turner sketchbooks exhibited at the museum, though I believe the Tate has some in their collection. Here’s another book that looks nice, a facsimile edition of his “Skies Sketchbook“.
It’s been fun to get all my notebooks out of storage and start trying to organize them better. Opening each box is like visiting old friends! I thought I’d give you a box by box tour of my collection over the next few months– longtime readers will recognize items I’ve reviewed in the past.
This first box contains non-Moleskine pocket size hardcover and softcover squared notebooks. These are all ones I’ve designated as having some chance of future daily use, as graph paper is my favorite for daily journals. I have listed all the brands below, first with my off the cuff recollection of how I obtained the notebook, and then a link to my original blog post about it. I could identify all the brands just from looking at the spines, but sometimes my memory turned out to be a little off on the rest of the story! These are listed in order from top to bottom in the box, followed by the two on the right.
Ecosystem— purchased at B&N
Nope, actually I received this as a sample for review in 2010: Review: Ecosystem Notebook. I wasn’t really won over by it.
I’m not sure this brand is still active, but B&N.com seems to have some stock. A few also show up on Amazon.
Piccadilly— purchased at Borders
I posted about these being introduced in 2009, and posted about my lined Piccadilly earlier that year. I used at least one or two of these squared notebooks as daily journals, but never did an extensive review until they introduced a softcover notebook. For a brief period I was obsessed with hunting down pocket size Piccadillies at Borders because they were so cheap, but the quality control wasn’t great, so I stopped buying them. And when Borders went out of business, I didn’t see them in stores much– occasionally at B&N but not often, and never the pocket size.
Various Paperblanks notebooks on Amazon, this particular one is the Grolier Mini Reporter, but it did not seem to be available. So many of the Paperblanks styles you see in stores are lined, but I’m always excited when I see their rare squared notebooks!
Brunnen Kompagnon— purchased in Turkey?
Yes, purchased in Instanbul in 2010, and included in a wrap-up of my Turkey purchases in early 2011: Notebooks Bought in Istanbul
Another Istanbul purchase, included in the link above. I really want to use this one, but sometimes when I’ve only got a single notebook of a certain type, I don’t want to use it in case I fall in love with it and then can’t get another!
Clairefontaine— purchased at Marie Tournelle in Paris, 2016?
I was correct about where I got these two notebooks, but not when. That trip was in 2014, with my various purchases shown off in this post: Notebooks from Paris and Amsterdam
These are not sold in the US as far as I know. I found one on Amazon with squared pages, but it is a larger size. Clairefontaine calls this cover style “Age Bag” or in the US, “Basics,” but in the US they only seem to sell them with lined pages, which is too bad– like other Clairefontaine notebooks, they have very fountain pen friendly paper. You can see the range of notebooks with these covers on Clairefontaine’s website.
Oxford— purchased at FNAC in Paris, 2018
Got that one right. See Notebooks from Europe, posted early in 2019. I haven’t done a full review of this Oxford notebook yet, but it features 90 GSM Optik paper also found in Black & Red notebooks, which is great with fountain pens. It is rare to find Optik paper available in squared rather than the ubiquitous lined.
Art AlternativesPen & Ink— purchased from Dick Blick (or Amazon?)
Reviewed in 2014: Review: Pen & Ink Squared Notebook. I may also have purchased one from JetPens. I bought the two of them separately because I love this brand but was so disappointed in the heavy dark grid lines inside and hoped it was just an anomaly. Alas, both were the same.
Still available on Amazon, but order with caution: this brand has generally changed to a new design with a diagonal elastic, even though many retailers haven’t changed their product images. Other styles also available at Amazon and JetPens.
I love the variety this box represents– all similar in size, all squared pages, and yet all so different! The ones I am most likely to use are the Kleid, Fabio Ricci, TWSBI, Clairefontaine and Oxford notebooks. I used Moleskine squared notebooks quite often and it’s time to work another brand into my rotation again!
I’ve been coveting a Waverley Scotland notebook ever since I first saw them at Kinokuniya, so I was thrilled when the company sent me a sample to review!
The sample I received is one of Waverley’s pocket size Commonplace Books. I rather like that they call them “commonplace books” rather than the more common “journal” or “notebook,” as the term commonplace book suggests a compilation of information or quotations, or a scrapbook– to me, the best notebooks are always kind of a jumble of things jotted and collected like that.
Since I happen to have some Scottish ancestors whose name was MacPherson, I asked them to send me the MacPherson Red tartan. This is just one of the 48 tartans they offer. It must be a challenge for physical retail stores to decide which tartans to stock, though some Scottish names are more common than others. And some of the tartans are universal designs not linked to a particular clan. It’s worth visiting their website (US Site or UK Site) to see the full range. Whether or not you have any Scottish heritage, it’s hard not to love all these beautiful color combinations and you probably won’t be able to pick just one. (Just like one of our Notebook Addicts of the Week!)
The notebook is a hardcover, in a standard 3.5 x 5.5″ format. The tartan cloth wrapping the outside is lovely– soft but substantial and as noted above, the woven colors are beautiful. The cloth is from Kinloch Anderson Scotland, who were established in Edinburgh in 1868 and have supplied tartan cloth and kilts to the royal family among others. Every Waverley notebook comes with a little booklet with a history of tartan and a clan map of Scotland. In addition, each notebook has a separate card with a history of the particular clan associated with that tartan. (And it is worth emphasizing that these materials offer interesting and true factual info, not some fairy tale about Robert Burns having written all his poetry in a Waverley notebook.)
The construction of the notebook feels very solid. The cloth cover makes the notebook a little thicker than average for a 176 page notebook. There is some cover overhang, but it is pretty minimal and proportional to the thickness. On the sample I received, the overhang was slightly uneven, but within the range of what is typical with many brands, not enough to really stick out as a defect. The only branding on the exterior is a cute little patch sewn onto the back cover.
Waverley Commonplace Book compared to a pocket Moleskine
The Waverley Scotland notebook includes standard features such as a ribbon marker, elastic closure and expanding back pocket. The elastic is just the right tension, and its color varies to match each tartan. The ribbon marker seems to be a silver grey across all color combinations. One nice thing about the back pocket is that it includes a slot for a business card. Why doesn’t everyone do that?! Another snazzy detail is that the page edges are stained, again in varying shades to match each tartan.
The inside front cover has brand info and a space to write contact details. Additional brand info appears inside the back cover. The paper within is 80 GSM, lined on one side and plain on the other, which works well for people who like to write and sketch. One signature at the back is perforated. The paper is a creamy ivory color, with fine grey lines. It is smooth-ish– not very toothy but not as smooth as Moleskine, Clairefontaine or Rhodia paper.
Alas, I did not find it to be very fountain pen friendly. I found that quite a few pens bled through and feathered. Gel ink pens and pencils are fine, though, and show-through is about average. Waverley has a post on their website about this issue and cites another review that says the notebooks ARE fountain pen friendly, so the paper quality may not be consistent, or it may have changed in the last couple of years. Either way, I hope Waverley can work on that! The list price for these notebooks is $15, which is in line with the competition and seems fair given the design details and cloth cover.
Maybe it’s just the MacPherson in me, but I love the Waverley Scotland notebook, despite the paper not being ideal. It has nice little features that distinguish it from the pack, and the tartan cloth covers are really special. The perfect gift for anyone who has Scottish heritage, or anyone who doesn’t! They also make smaller and larger sizes. A broad selection is available at Amazon.
And you can try your luck in our giveaway! The kind folks at Waverley have offered one pocket notebook as a prize. The winner can select the tartan of their choice (subject to stock availability). One winner will be randomly chosen from eligible entries received in any of these ways:
On Twitter, tweet something containing “Waverley Scotland Notebook @NotebookStories @tartanwest1â€, and follow @NotebookStories and @tartanwest1
On Instagram, follow @Notebook.Stories and @waverleybooks and comment on my Waverley giveaway post, tagging a friend and adding a hashtag of your favorite adjective describing the Waverley notebooks. (Example: “@myfriendsally #scottishâ€)
On your blog, post something containing the words “Waverley Notebooks†and “Notebook Stories†and link back to this post, also leaving a comment below with the link in case the trackback doesn’t work.
Please note that the prize can only be shipped to a US address. The deadline for entry is Friday December 13, 2019 at 11:59PM, EST. Please allow a couple of weeks for me to announce a winner. Good luck everyone!
I spotted this in the New York Times Magazine of November 17, 2019. It is one of the saddest, most infuriating, most shameful notebook pages I’ve featured, as it was drawn by a young man who was incarcerated in a Japanese internment camp during World War II, and then ended up serving in the military and dying in combat in 1945.
A drawing from the diary of a young man named Stanley Hayami, who was incarcerated at Heart Mountain, Wyo., and later killed in combat in 1945.Credit…Japanese American National Museum (gift from the estate of Frank Naoichi and Asano Hayami, parents of Stanley Kunio Hayami, 95.226.1)
The Japanese-American concentration camps — more commonly called internment camps, though many Japanese-Americans today reject such euphemistic language — were effectively established in February 1942, when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The act authorized the military to set up zones “from which any or all persons may be excludedâ€; 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry (two-thirds of whom were United States citizens) living across the West Coast were stripped of their possessions, forcibly removed from their homes and imprisoned.
Unfortunately, we don’t learn anything more about Stanley Hayami or his diary, as the article focuses on a novel called No-No Boy and other literature capturing the experience of Japanese-Americans in the camps, a horrifying episode in American history that has long been downplayed.
It’s been more than 8 years since I reviewed a notebook from Letts! This classic English brand has been around even longer than that, though… since 1812, in fact! Letts claims to be the first publisher of “commercial diaries,” meaning a mass-produced calendar book combined with space to write and usually some business-related promotional info and/or helpful facts. The company has since merged with another classic English brand, Filofax, and is now part of a large corporation that owns the Blueline and Rediform stationery and office product brands as well.
Their products have evolved over the years, but still have a classic feel. The samples the company sent me to review harken back to their early days with designs that feel timeless. “Lett’s” take a look!
Letts Origins Notebook
I’ll focus on one of the A5 size journals first. This is the “note” version, which on Letts’ website is referred to as the “Origins Book“. It is simple and straightforward, with an understated leather-look cover in a lovely shade of blue. The brand name is in a prominent position on the front cover, back cover and spine, but the debossing is subtle and classy. The hardcover, rounded corner construction seems sturdy. There is no elastic closure. The notebook ships with branding info on a sticker on the front cover, and a barcode sticker on the back. They remove easily, but the rear barcode sticker pulled off a little of the dye from the leather– the light spots aren’t terribly noticeable, but I was very glad the front cover sticker didn’t do the same thing!
Inside, the off-white endpapers have a similar leather-like texture, and are printed with a brief history of the company. There is a pocket in the back but it’s just a rounded corner pocket with no expanding sides. This makes it easy to tuck things in, but limits how much will fit. There is a ribbon marker.
The space for writing your contact details is on the first inside page, at the beginning of the index pages. These are followed by 235 numbered pages. I love how they have used the red double line at the top of the page and blue lines below. I’ve seen quite a few old notebooks that use that design, and it looks much more elegant than today’s notebooks that mostly have just plain grey lines.
The paper is 90 GSM, and feels quite smooth. Fountain pens work great with no feathering or bleed-through (though I realized in the midst of testing that it was time to refill a lot of my fountain pens!) Only the usual super-soaker pens bled through, and showthrough was about average.
Overall, this is a very satisfying choice if you want a fountain pen friendly notebook with lined pages and a classic feel. The list price is $23.99. Other colors are available but unfortunately not a pocket size or other page styles such as dot grid or plain. It would be fun to have a page layout that keeps the double red line at the top, and perhaps one blue line and the page number at the bottom, but is unlined in between. With the 90 GSM paper, that would make a great art journal!
Letts Icon Travel Journal
The other A5 notebook is the Icon Book Travel Journal, which retails for $16.99. The cover is a nice retro shade of green, but it is a smooth paper-wrapped hard cover without the leather texture. A debossed line around the outside edges dresses it up a bit, and the logos are stamped in gold. The inside is very similar to the previous notebook, but the main section of pages is formatted with a space at the top for date and location so you can record details about trips. I have seen travel journals from the 1950s in this exact format.
There are a few index pages at the beginning, and in the back, a section to record other travel info. There are a couple pages for a yearly planner, then highlights of hotel, restaurant and travel info for major cities around the world, a few pages of time zone and conversion charts, and pages to record expenses, dates to remember, favorite restaurants and people you’ve met, and general notes.
I’ve had so many diaries over the years that had these kinds of info pages. As a kid, I found them rather interesting and enjoyed knowing trivia about the population of cities or telephone dialing codes, even if I had no actual need for such facts. The Letts travel journal includes a few things such as zodiac and anniversary gift info that don’t really relate to travel per se, as opposed to handy things like an international clothing size conversion chart. The hotel information will not be useful to all travelers, as it is limited to a few of the best known and most expensive hotels in each city. (But I can actually say I’ve stayed at one of the ones listed– it was the Royal York in Toronto, which was, surprisingly, affordable enough for a business traveler, if only in the middle of January when no one wants to go to Toronto! The journal does include a Fahrenheit/Celsius temperature conversion chart, which would have helped me know how cold “really f***ing cold” is!)
The other two samples I received are pocket size notebooks, again one just a regular lined notebook and the other a travel journal. These are in a slim format, approximately 3.5 x 6″. This width includes a pen slot along the spine of the notebook, another detail that I’ve seen in notebooks dating back to the 1800s. Those antique notebooks usually had a small pencil in the slot, but the Letts diaries include an elegant gold metallic ballpoint pen with a flat top that makes it easy to pull out. The pen slot tucks under easily when you open the notebook, so it doesn’t interfere with it opening completely flat. The pen feels very long and skinny when you write with it, but the shape is dictated by fitting into the notebook. I’m not sure what kind of refills might work other than the ones Letts sells, but what’s in there works fine. It seems like a pretty basic medium ballpoint, but I’m so accustomed to using very fine gel ink pens that I don’t have much basis to judge a ballpoint these days!
The faux-leather textures and exterior colors of these pocket size samples are different from the larger ones I received, and the pocket notebook also features gilt page edges, but otherwise the page formats inside are basically the same as the larger notebooks. The paper is only 45GSM in the notebook and 70 GSM in the travel journal, though, so they will not be as fountain pen friendly. (I didn’t do full tests on the small notebooks but made a small mark with a fountain pen that showed significant bleed-through.)
The pocket size travel journal is their “Origins Slim Travel Journal,” which is available in other colors and retails for $21.99. The pocket notebook is the “Legacy Slim Pocket Notebook,” also available in other colors, at $24.99.
I’ve probably used the word “classic” too much in this post, but these Letts notebooks are just that. Their collection names Legacy, Origins, and Icon show what they were aiming at, and they have succeeded in making these current products feel like part of the brand’s long history. They have also kept them relatively affordable, especially for a product that is made in Great Britain. They don’t feel as upscale as a real leather Smythson notebook (which would cost about 3X more), but Letts’ faux-leather is more realistic than most, and they offer a great value with features that distinguish them from many others on the market. If there’s anything more I’d ask for it would be that they add a 9x14cm version of the Origins notebook with unlined pages just to suit my own personal preferences!
A wide variety of Letts diaries, notebooks and journals are available at Amazon and other retailers, and of course directly from Letts. Amazon doesn’t seem to stock all the products I reviewed, but they do have the ones below, though prices and color availability may vary:
You can also take a chance on winning one of these samples! I will be giving away the two small notebooks and the green travel journal, 1 notebook each to 3 lucky winners selected from all eligible entries. To enter:
On Twitter, tweet something containing “Letts Notebook @NotebookStories @LettsDiariesâ€, and follow @NotebookStories and @Lettsoflondon
On Instagram, follow @Notebook.Stories and @lettsoflondon and comment on my Letts giveaway post, tagging a friend and adding a hashtag of your favorite adjective describing the Letts notebook or travel journal. (Example: “@myfriendsally #retrodesignâ€)
On your blog, post something containing the words “Letts Notebooks†and “Notebook Stories†and link back to this post, also leaving a comment below with the link in case the trackback doesn’t work.
Please note that the prize can only be shipped to a US address. The deadline for entry is Friday December 6, 2019 at 11:59PM, EST. Please allow a couple of weeks for me to announce a winner. Good luck everyone!
Our latest notebook addict of the week is Vanessa Berry, an Australian writer and artist. In a 2012 blog post, she talks about her collection of 31 diaries, written starting in 1998. The photo of the whole collection is striking:
The close-ups of the individual notebooks are also fascinating. She mostly uses old notebooks found in flea markets around the world, so there is a lot of variety. She is not just a notebook addict, she is a champion vintage notebook spotter!
Vanessa on her diary habit:
I started keeping a diary at the end of 1998: I had been making zines for a few years by this stage, and always kept a notebook with me, but in them I would only scrawl down ideas and observations, rather than the narrative of my life. By the end of 1998 I had come through a hard year. My friend Natasha died at the start of 1998, a few months later I turned 20, and all year I imagined the future as a kind of pit, into which I would continue falling. I stopped falling eventually, and it was at that point I took up a notebook and started to write the story of my life, for only myself to read. I’ve kept writing diaries since, at some periods of my life writing multiple entries a day, other times a few entries a week. They take up a lot of space on my bookshelves, and even though I rarely read over them, I like the idea of my life being recorded there, if I should ever need to revisit it.
