Black Cover

Quick update -

Many of you have been writing over the past few months to ask about the site’s lack of posts. Part of the reason is that my (non-notebook-related) job is keeping me very, very busy at the moment. But a larger reason is that I honestly haven’t seen any notebooks recently that really intrigue me. I have a few lying around that have yet to be reviewed, but I’ve been avoiding this because they’re all in the “so-so” to “pretty useless” range. I’d rather just not review them instead of spending a whole entry trashing them.

I hope to post some updates soon on how a few choice notebooks have held up to wear and tear. And as soon as a decent notebook comes along, I’ll review it in a heartbeat. For those of you who were worried, Black Cover’s not going anywhere - we’re just waiting for something good to come our way!

The Midori Traveler’s Notebook, a leather-bound journal from Japan, is something I’ve been wanting to review for a quite a while.  Advertised as the notebook for “all the travelers who have a free spirit,” I’ve received numerous e-mails asking us for a review, and more importantly, how to get one.

However, as far as I can tell, Midori products are not sold anywhere in the United States. Repeated e-mails to the company website went unanswered, and I had pretty much given up on reviewing one of these when I stumbled on Just Ann’s blog, which had full instructions for ordering from a Japanese online retailer. I was a bit skeptical, but less than a week after I placed my order, I had a copy of the journal in my hands direct from Japan (full ordering instructions to follow this review).

The notebook offers its own summation on the attached insert: “Each leather cover is made by hand in Chiangmai, a city in northern Thailand. It appeals its own raison d’etre by the simplicity: roughly cut leather and a rubber band with the clasp made of tin. The inside notebook is made in Japan carefully and has Midori’s original paper made to pursue the highest comfortability to write.”

Midori further encourages the owner to “please write down at random what you feel or what you think in the cafe you dropped into during your travel, which will surely be your precious treasure. Besides, you may find a new feature every day, going to work, having this ntoebook in your hand. It may change your life.”

OK, so the English translation is a bit spotty, but I have to admit that the romanticism of this idea got to me. A simple notebook made for trekking across the world? Something that Indiana Jones might carry on adventures to Egyptian tombs and, er, sidewalk cafes? Sign me up!

We’re reviewing the brown version today, though a black version is also available (I would’ve reviewed the black version, except I think it looks somewhat like a check book).

This journal is totally different from anything we’ve previously reviewed.  First off, size-wise, it measures in at approximately 8.5″x4.5″ (21.5cmx11.5cm), which pretty much prohibits pocket travel. In comparison to the Moleskine…well, there really is no comparison.

But that’s OK. It’s one thing to attempt to be a pocket notebook and fail by being an inch or two too wide.  It’s another to never intend to be a pocket notebook, and the Midori fits this category. It feels much better suited to an inner jack pocket, or some sort of travel bag.

The cover, as mentioned earlier, is hand made in northern Thailand. It’s real leather, a rarity amongst most of the journals we’ve reviewed, and feels (and smells!) great. It scuffs and scratches very easily like real leather, but much of this can easily be buffed out. The insert reminds you, “this notebook has a leather cover, which the more you use, the better quality it becomes…The leather quality changes and scratches remain as your memories, this notebook will be more precious than ever to you.” OK, there’s some exaggeration here, but it is both simple and of high quality.

It’s also very, very flexible:

You could pretty easily roll this up and shove it in your back pocket, but fresh out of the box, you’re probably not going to want to do that. It feels like it wants to be treated with a little more respect, for better or for worse. An elastic band comes out of the center of the back cover to keep the notebook shut, and I have to say that this elastic band is damn tight.

As you can see, the leather is very rough (as it should be) on the reverse side. The journal is meant to be reusable, and an elastic band around the spine allows you to easily remove Midori paper inserts when you run out. This is a very good thing, as the included insert only has about 60 pages.

The pages are a nice creamy white color. They’re relatively thick, and don’t bleed ink very easily. The pages that come with the journal are blank, but there are a number of different replacement inserts you can buy, including lined, gridded, and dated pages. Inserts also come with as many as 128 pages.

For a bookmark, there’s an odd elastic band down the middle of the notebook (the loose one; the other is the band that holds the insert in). I’m not quite sure how to use this yet, as it seems a bit too difficult to switch to a different page without breaking it, but I’m sure it’s just something I’m not getting (first time I’ve been stumped by a bookmark).

The Midori Traveler’s journal costs 3350 Yen, or approximately $36 American dollars.  With shipping to New York City, my total came to $48. So the real question is clearly: “Is this notebook worth $48?”

For me, not really. If I traveled more, maybe, but then, I’m a huge fan of the Ciak, which is basically a smaller, thicker, and more useful version of this. However, that certainly doesn’t make this a bad notebook. The quality is great, I like the refillable inserts, and in case you run into trouble with a broken elastic band or a bookmark, you can even buy a relatively cheap repair kit (which also gives you the ability to change the colors of said bands). I think this notebook appeals to a certain notebook crowd who are going to love it.

However, if you are going to order this, just make sure you realize: this is a simple notebook. Very simple. Shockingly simple. It’s a nice leather cover, about 60 pages inside, an elastic band around the spine, a bookmark, and a band to keep it closed. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but when I first opened the package (and wow was there a lot of very romantic packaging), I was a bit underwhelmed. It’s only in reviewing this now that I’m beginning to appreciate it for what it is - a simple notebook. And as I continually expound, the beauty in notebooks, to me, is in their simplicity.

Ordering instructions:

OK, ready? This is actually pretty easy. The Japanese website that sells these is Bundoki.com. The site is only in Japanese except for a short section on how to place international orders. Click HERE to read those instructions - about midway through the page, you’ll find some English.

Summary: What you have to do is send an email with the item #, quantity, and color, along with your name, address, country, and phone number, to acco@bundoki.com. They’ll send you an invoice, which you then pay by Paypal. Once this is done, they ship it out to you immediately - I received mine less than a week after I paid, direct from Japan.

The basic Traveler’s Notebook (brown or black) is here (I’ve used Google’s Translate program to help). The item number is #7063902. You can find the various Midori add-on products, including page inserts, repair kits, binders, and folders, here.

In summary:

Send an email to acco@bundoki.com.

In the body of the email, write:

Item #: 7063902
Item name: Midori Traveler’s Notebook
Color: Brown (or black)
Quantity: 1

Name
Address (inc. country)
Phone

Easy, right? They were pretty quick in getting back to me. If you’re interested, I’d place an order quickly - according to the website, they only have four left in stock. I’d also buy any inserts now rather than later - they’re not that expensive, and the shipping won’t change that much.

Hey everyone -

Sorry to have disappeared recently. I’ve been incredibly busy with non-stationery work, but will be posting a very interesting new notebook review on Monday. The Piccadilly notebook prizes were put in the mail the other day, so those should be arriving soon. And keep those notebook suggestions coming!

-BC

I’ve said in a number of our reviews that the notebooks that impress me most are those that show ingenuity in simplicity.  I’m pretty utilitarian in my notebook usage - I don’t write with a special pen, or generally treat them with any sort of respect. I don’t need a fancy cover or classy paper. I like something simple, durable, and effective, but that still shows some originality.

Over the past two years, a number of fantastic notebooks have been recommended to us that fit nearly every single criteria we have for a great little black notebook except for one thing: they’re not black. I’ve resisted going down this road for quite a while - I mean, we’re Black Cover, right? We only review little black notebooks? The more I think about, the more I realize we’re cutting off a huge amount of great notebooks simply because of the color. Our focus will always be on black notebooks when we can find them, but so long as the notebooks generally fit our “perfection in simplicity” mantra, we’re going to broaden our horizons a little.

And I’m extremely happy with this decision, as the Rite in the Rain All-Weather Memo Book is probably one of my favorite notebooks of all time.

Yep, green and beige. They don’t offer black (though a banana yellow is also an option). Rite in the Rain, as many of you know, are manufacturers of a patented paper coating technology that renders their products impervious to rain. Yes, you can literally “write in the rain.” According to the brochure, their goal is to produce products that serve professionals “from the top of Mt. Everest to the deepest caves on the planet,” and judging from the letters sent in to their Cool Stories page, it looks like users are finding such uses all across the world.

Rite in the Rain was started in the 1920s when Jerry Siller developed a water-proof paper for the Pacific Northwest logging industry.  Today, they make about a million different products in all shapes and sizes, and sell some pretty cool weather-proof notebook pouches and covers to boot, so I’d recommend spending some time on their site to find the one you like most. As always, we’re focusing on their pocket version, the Tactical Memo Book, which comes in green and tan. A slightly different version comes in yellow.

On the cover is the company logo and writing. Though I can be iffy on cover writing, I don’t mind this at all. Rather than detract from the notebooks, I think it gives them a sense of character like the Alwych, and I think they’d actually lose something if it were taken away (sadly, it sort of renders the Alwych’s claim to All-Weather status a bit outdated).

Size-wise, these measure in at approximately 3.4″x5″ - a hair skinnier and a full half inch shorter than a standard Moleskine.

I love this size. I’m so bored by 3.5″x5.5″ notebooks, which are apparently the world standard for pocket notebooks as set by Moleskine. I’m always thrilled when someone does something totally new with it, and the size here is perfect for writing handheld.

The notebook is a soft cover and is very flexible. But there’s some body to it, and while it will certainly bend in your back pocket, it still has a necessary firmness.

The tan and green notebooks have a military theme, and the back cover and inner front cover have some helpful reference material, including a 5″ ruler, an English System of Measurements Chart, a Metric to English conversion table, and map scaling tables and rulers.

I didn’t order the Yellow “Universal” option, so I’m not sure if this is included, as it seems more general-purpose.

Now for the pages.

As you can see, the pages of these notebooks reflect a lighter version of their cover colors. The Yellow Universal notebook offers basic white, with blue lines. The pages all feature solid horizontal lines with dotted vertical lines for gridding purposes.

I absolutely love this concept. While I agree with many of you that gridded paper is fantastic to write on, there are times when I wish the vertical lines weren’t so prominent. Rite in the Rain has found a perfect solution to this problem. And yes, I hate the “Rite in the Rain” logo on the bottom of each page. But I can overlook it.

Yep, this is me “riting in the rain.” It absolutely, 100% works (I wrote through the water), and when it dries, the pages show zero signs of ever having been wet. Incredible. The pages are thick and show no visible ink through. The reverse:

In terms of flexibility these notebooks do not open totally flat.

Frankly, I don’t think you could if you tried - the binding is intentionally firm, and I think it would extremely difficult to forcibly break the spine, let alone do so in every day wear and tear. The notebook opens plenty wide for my purposes, though, and I love how durable this makes them.

No pocket, no elastic band, and no bookmark, but this notebook needs none of those amenities. In what it is aiming to achieve, it succeeds to the fullest. They’re certainly not for those of you looking for a fine stationery product, but for those that enjoy utilitarian notebooks, you cannot - I REPEAT! - cannot go wrong.

Among other things, these little notebooks cost only $3.45 each. OK, it’s not that perfect - my bill broke down as follows: ordering two notebooks came to $6.90. Then there was a mysterious $4.00 “miscellaneous charge” (a handling fee, probably for buying too few notebooks), and $8 for shipping to New York from Washington state. All told, I paid $19 for the two notebooks. Still cheaper than a Moleskine, but I now wish I had purchased a few more to get the overall price per notebook down, knowing that I’m definitely going to be using these quite frequently. Black Cover reader WyldWoods points out that you can get them at a discount for only $3.20 each with significantly cheaper shipping at Trail Explorers. Finally, you can avoid the whole  online thing entirely by going to the Rite in the Rain site and using the Dealer Finder to the right of the page to find a local vendor.

If this review interests you, I’d definitely spend some time on their site to find the notebook that suits your purposes. Click here for the Green Memo 954, the Tan Memo 954T, or the Universal Yellow 974. They offer some of their larger notebooks in poydura, made from 100% consumer waste and are “virtually indestructible.”

For some reason, I put off trying this company out for a long time, and am kicking myself for checking them out earlier. Highly recommended!

I meant to post the winners on Halloween, but got caught up in festivities.

Before we give the names, I want to thank all of you for entering. Special thanks goes out to those of you who either added us to your blog rolls, blogged about us, or both. We had thousands of new hits this month and tons of RSS adds, and we can only hope you like the site enough to keep those links up (no guilt if you want to take ‘em down now though!).

It took me a solid hour to type up the entries list in a name randomizer (which claims to base its results on atmospheric noise). But without further ado, the winners receiving three notebooks each (lined vs. blank selected at random) are:

Brian C., Brentwood, CA
Tasha C., Williamstown, MA
Ron G., Kansas City, MO
David G., Granite City, IL
Christian B., Phoenix, AZ

If you won, you don’t have to do anything - we’ll contact you.

As it happens, we have three additional notebooks to give away. The first goes to Brad over at The Pen Addict, whose site brought us the most amount of hits. The second goes to Chris at Amateur Econ, who came in second. The third goes to the very last name on our random name generator list (because being last is not always a bad thing!), which is:

Scott K., (address needed!).

If you’re looking for another contest to enter, Moleskine is having a rather silly one in which they’re asking for pictures of your notebook pages. This is the sort of thing where your pages should be brilliant, as if you planned every word, doodle, and scribble, only it should look very incidental, as if this brilliance just happened by accident. And irony helps too. I’ve always felt that Moleskine is promoting a dumb philosophy of notebooks, in that you’re using the tools once favored by Picasso, Hemingway, Van Gogh, Jesus, etc., and everything you write down had better be up to their level. Personally, my notebooks are a mess, with lots of crossing-outs, horrible penmanship, and often have spots and stains. And not in a pretty way.

However, if you’re the type who creates beatiful notebook pages, or can forge one quickly, I’ve been told that you should go here now. It’s funny, because the intern who sent us the email acknowledged that we probably wouldn’t post this info, because we hate Moleskines in part because they are “prohibitively expensive for some.” Haha, cute.

HAPPY
HALLOWEEN!

The Piccadilly Contest is closed as of Thursday at midnight. Winners to be posted soon…