![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyOver on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
misia's journal, there is kvetching about Levenger's and the way they are turning themselves into a catalogue for rich people who want to look like booklovers instead of actual booklovers (who come at all income levels and are a lot less worried about how they look than about whether they can bring another book into the house without having the floors collapse). And since I was looking at Levenger's catalogue this morning over breakfast, I chimed in and embarked myself on a digression which I realized really needed to be a post of its own, because notebooks, as heres_luck and the long-suffering Mirrorthaw can attest, are things that I take very seriously.
I have stringent requirements for notebooks for the very simple reason that I take one with me everywhere I go. This practice means that (a.) if I think of something brilliant, I can write it down and find it again, (b.) if for some reason I get stuck waiting somewhere, I have something to do, and (c.) I always have paper and pen--for writing down phone numbers or leaving notes for people or making impromptu signs forelisem's table at WisCon (which is my most recent appropriation of notebook to unexpected uses).
Taking an all-purpose, catch-all notebook with me has been a habit since 1999 (before that, I tried to keep separate notebooks for diary uses and for seminar notes and research and fiction, and it was just ridiculous because I am too scatter-brained and unobservant--I always ended up with the wrong notebook for the purpose at hand), and I am a bit over halfway through notebook #26. So I know what I need from a notebook.
It must be:
1. sturdy.
2. sized to fit in my (admittedly commodious) purse
3. bound, rather than being a binder or a spiral thingy. Binder rings break and warp, and the paper tears, and because I hold my pen oddly, spiral notebooks mean that I end up with spiral indentations in the side of my hand.
4. equipped with paper that can handle fountain pen ink
5. NARROW RULED. My handwriting should properly be classified as a liquid: it expands to fill the available space, and if there are no lines at all it flows downhill.
Requirement #5 takes a lot of otherwise beautiful notebooks (e.g. Clairefontaine) out of the running, but long experience tells me it is not negotiable. Writing by hand only works for me if I like the way my handwriting looks.
For a long time (25 notebooks) I used National Brand Chemistry Notebooks, which are hardbacked, compact, and have numbered pages. They also use green paper, which is a little less than ideal if, like me, you like your ink in peculiar colors, but the thing that impelled me away from them is the fact that they redesigned the notebook--now, instead of inoffensive denim-blue, the covers are lurid purple (the picture on artstuff's page is sadly not at all misleading). And since we'd moved, I was going to be buying notebooks online anyway, so it seemed like a reasonable time to experiment.
My first experiment has been Levenger's Notabilia notebooks. They're larger than National Brand, more expensive--although not by as much as you might be inclined to assume--soft-cover, and the pages are unnumbered (I numbered them myself because I've gotten used to being able to cross-reference my computer files to my field notebooks). Also, the lines are slightly wider. But the paper is good quality, and white, and the notebook is thus far holding up well against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I don't like them as much as I want to like them, so when I've used these two (you can only buy them in sets of two, for reasons that I'm sure Levenger's believes makes sense), I may very well be experimenting further afield. Or possibly going back to National Brand, lurid purple covers and all.
It's one of those things that's simultaneously utterly trivial and genuinely important--and unabashedly geeky.
misia's journal, there is kvetching about Levenger's and the way they are turning themselves into a catalogue for rich people who want to look like booklovers instead of actual booklovers (who come at all income levels and are a lot less worried about how they look than about whether they can bring another book into the house without having the floors collapse). And since I was looking at Levenger's catalogue this morning over breakfast, I chimed in and embarked myself on a digression which I realized really needed to be a post of its own, because notebooks, as heres_luck and the long-suffering Mirrorthaw can attest, are things that I take very seriously.I have stringent requirements for notebooks for the very simple reason that I take one with me everywhere I go. This practice means that (a.) if I think of something brilliant, I can write it down and find it again, (b.) if for some reason I get stuck waiting somewhere, I have something to do, and (c.) I always have paper and pen--for writing down phone numbers or leaving notes for people or making impromptu signs for
elisem's table at WisCon (which is my most recent appropriation of notebook to unexpected uses).Taking an all-purpose, catch-all notebook with me has been a habit since 1999 (before that, I tried to keep separate notebooks for diary uses and for seminar notes and research and fiction, and it was just ridiculous because I am too scatter-brained and unobservant--I always ended up with the wrong notebook for the purpose at hand), and I am a bit over halfway through notebook #26. So I know what I need from a notebook.
It must be:
1. sturdy.
2. sized to fit in my (admittedly commodious) purse
3. bound, rather than being a binder or a spiral thingy. Binder rings break and warp, and the paper tears, and because I hold my pen oddly, spiral notebooks mean that I end up with spiral indentations in the side of my hand.
4. equipped with paper that can handle fountain pen ink
5. NARROW RULED. My handwriting should properly be classified as a liquid: it expands to fill the available space, and if there are no lines at all it flows downhill.
Requirement #5 takes a lot of otherwise beautiful notebooks (e.g. Clairefontaine) out of the running, but long experience tells me it is not negotiable. Writing by hand only works for me if I like the way my handwriting looks.
For a long time (25 notebooks) I used National Brand Chemistry Notebooks, which are hardbacked, compact, and have numbered pages. They also use green paper, which is a little less than ideal if, like me, you like your ink in peculiar colors, but the thing that impelled me away from them is the fact that they redesigned the notebook--now, instead of inoffensive denim-blue, the covers are lurid purple (the picture on artstuff's page is sadly not at all misleading). And since we'd moved, I was going to be buying notebooks online anyway, so it seemed like a reasonable time to experiment.
My first experiment has been Levenger's Notabilia notebooks. They're larger than National Brand, more expensive--although not by as much as you might be inclined to assume--soft-cover, and the pages are unnumbered (I numbered them myself because I've gotten used to being able to cross-reference my computer files to my field notebooks). Also, the lines are slightly wider. But the paper is good quality, and white, and the notebook is thus far holding up well against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I don't like them as much as I want to like them, so when I've used these two (you can only buy them in sets of two, for reasons that I'm sure Levenger's believes makes sense), I may very well be experimenting further afield. Or possibly going back to National Brand, lurid purple covers and all.
It's one of those things that's simultaneously utterly trivial and genuinely important--and unabashedly geeky.
