I stopped by a Borders store in Southbury, Connecticut this weekend, and look what I saw:

Barnes & Noble isn’t the only chain bookstore offering some exclusive Moleskine items– Borders offers this “brick,” a lined notebook bundled with 2 cahiers:

This display of journals was quite attractive. I tend to use mainly plain black journals, but these colorful designs are a bit funkier than others I’ve seen. I might have been tempted to buy some, but they tended to be a bit larger than my preferred size:

There were a number of notebooks and journals on the markdown shelf– pictured here are some Ciak notebooks, and there were also a few Moleskine watercolor notebooks.

The main reason I stopped at Borders was to see if they were carrying the Picadilly notebooks reviewed at Black Cover. Black Cover had suggested that Barnes & Noble was the big Moleskine supporter and that was why Borders was going with Picadilly, but I think both big chains are equally in bed with Moleskine. Borders had a large Moleskine shelf presence, including all the regular notebook styles, a number of planner styles and the custom package above, and this store, as well as another Borders I visited recently, had no Picadilly notebooks in the stationery section. But on my way out, I did spot a few large format Picadilly notebooks right by the front door, displayed with all the bargain-priced books. I’m not surprised they ended up there, given the very low prices: I didn’t get a photo but the large Picadilly notebook was priced at only $5.99!