Archive for the ‘Notebooks’
Handmade leather notebooks for fountain pen users
Papers & Tschai Studio in Cebu produces beautiful hand-stitched leather notebooks with unlined pages. The paper is heavier than Moleskine’s so you can use a fountain pen without the ink bleeding through. This notebook, 11.5cm x 17.5cm, Php850. Contact Papers & Tschai at papersandtschai@gmail.com or text 0927 126 3933 or 0925 886 2598.
You can write between the lines of Pride and Prejudice.
The “lines” on the pages are the text of Jane Austen’s novel in small print. (Note: Not the complete novel.) If you can’t bear to read what you wrote, you can read Jane, or Charlotte, Bram and others.
Also available: Persuasion, The Wizard of Oz, Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Dracula, Jane Eyre, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Php699 at National Bookstores.
Stuff we found at the bookstore this week
A pencil sharpener in the shape of a tennis racquet…
that also projects pictures of a Disney princess. Is that Cinderella? For 25 bucks!
A metal pencil case with a smaller metal pencil case in it. 100 bucks.
A set of Sharpies in 5 neon colors for defiling personalizing stuff, Php299. Single colors, 38 bucks.
New Limited Edition Moleskines: Batman and Alice in Wonderland. Available in pocket-size (Php1160) and large (Php1580), lined and unlined.
The pocket-size unlined Alice carnet features artwork from the first edition.
*Prices quoted are from National Bookstores.
The notebook challenge: Leuchtturm vs Moleskine
We’ve been using Moleskine notebooks with unlined pages for many years and have no complaints, but we’re curious about other notebooks. Must be what marriage is like.
At the bookstore the Leuchtturm and Moleskine displays were right next to each other. They cost the same, so neither has the advantage price-wise. Leuchtturm has a wider range of colors—orange, fuchsia, dark green, bright purple, etc—than Moleskine, but Moleskine has the limited edition themes— Star Wars, Lego, etc.
Both Moleskine and Leuchtturm notebooks are available with unlined, lined, and squared pages. Leuchtturm notebooks are about one centimeter wider.
Price: Tie
Colors: Tie
Size: Leuchtturm
Leuchtturm pages are numbered, and there’s a table of contents so it’s easier to find the notes you need.
Convenience: Leucchturm Leuchtturm
The limited edition Moleskines come with stickers so you can customize the designs. Leuchtturms come with sticker labels for the covers and spines for easy filing.
Easy filing: Leuchtturm
Moleskines come with a “history” (they co-opted the story of the generic notebooks with elastic bands) and so do Leuchtturms.
History: Tie
Ease of pronunciation and spelling: Moleskine
We started using our Leuchtturm yesterday, and the quality of the paper is the same as Moleskine’s, although it is slightly thicker. However, it does not open flat on the table.
Paper quality: Tie
Flat-opening spine: Moleskine
Decision: We like them both. Good thing we’re not married.
Holiday presents for completists
We feel about the limited edition The Hobbit Moleskine clothbound notebook the same way we feel about the third episode in The Hobbit trilogy: We’ll get it because we have the previous editions, and we kind of like it, but we acknowledge that it doesn’t have to exist.
This one is boxed and clothbound. Yay. (Say that exactly the way Sean Bean’s Boromir in the mines of Moria said, “They have a cave troll.”) With a handwriting sample of J.R.R. Tolkien’s on the cover, so more money for his descendants.
And there’s a map in it…just like the earlier notebooks. What a surprise.
The endpapers are facsimiles of the original illustrations by Tolkien, and there are 7 pages of illustrations and 8 quotes inside—the same illustrations and quotes that appear in last year’s notebook and the year before last year’s notebook.
However, this Hobbit Moleskine is available only with lined pages, no version with plain pages. We prefer plain pages because strangely, we can write straight lines, but when there are lines our writing goes in all directions.
The Hobbit Moleskine boxed and clothbound notebook is available at National Bookstores, Php2,240.
Speaking of new isn’t necessarily better, there’s a new Lego Moleskine notebook in blue.
Compare it to the black one that came out a couple of years ago.
True, this one has stickers so you can customize the cover…
Naah, it doesn’t make that much difference. Available at National Bookstores, Php1,580.
It’s back to plain monochromatic Moleskines for us for now.
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