I love good notebooks, and I’m very
picky about them. They need high-quality
paper that even liquid ink won’t show through and hard covers that can survive
being packed about. They need to lie
completely flat when open, and they need to be beautiful. For thermal bound, they need to have a
notebook and something to hold them closed.
At the moment, I have:
33 completely filled
27 not filled (but about half of
them have some writing in them.
1 in progress (about 80% full)
So here are my recommendations, at a
variety of price points! I’ve listed
them from cheapest to most expensive . . . but please note that that doesn’t
reflect price efficiency.
Picadilly. I’ve traditionally bought these from Barnes
and Noble for around $7. There are many
available at places like thriftbooks.com and ebay. Decent quality for a low price point!
Peter
Pauper Press. If you prefer thermal
binding to spiral or wire-o but want to keep your price point low, this is a
wonderful option. They have many
wonderful artists on their team, including some of my favorites. Peter Pauper competes with much higher-end
notebooks despite their price point being only about $8-$12. I wrote The Land of the Purple Ring in
Peter Pauper notebooks.
My favorite, the Timeless Tree Journal:
C.R.
Gibson. I’ve only gotten their
spiral-bound notebooks, but they have a huge variety of stationery. I like the fact that many of their notebooks
have designs on the pages themselves.
And often a tint (rather than plain white). They’re priced at about $7-15, which is
pretty cheap for a high-quality notebook.
Paperblanks. Here our price-point jumps dramatically—for
Paperblanks, you’re looking at $22-$35 per notebook. However, the quality is also markedly
higher. For many years, Paperblanks was
the standard against which I held outer notebooks. They have designs on the edges, superb paper,
and sturdy covers. I own more
Paperblanks notebooks than any other brand.
Official photo, so you can see a notebook similar to one I have with professional lighting:
Azure
Notebook Therapy. For smaller handwriting only! Although these are the most expensive per
notebook ($30-$40), they’re actually a better deal than most, because there are
so many lines on each page and so many pages!
For example, you can see the one I’m currently writing in. I get about 400 words per page, double what I
get in most other notebooks. By the time
I’ve finished this one, I’ll have written almost 70,000 words in it over the
course of more than five months. The
paper is white with bullet dots, which took some adjusting to, but the quality
is fabulous and the edges colored. Each
notebook also comes in a beautiful box (I display them) with a matching
paperclip. Every notebook is
limited-time only. Really, the only
possible downside to these is that dog hair sticks to the linen ones.
My photo doesn’t do justice to their
beauty, so I’m also including this stock picture of the notebook I’m currently
writing in (the one that’s open):
PENS
Pilot
Fude-Makase
Pilot
Varsity
Uni
EMOTT
Staedtler
triplus fineliner
Uniball
Vision Elite
