It’s clean-out time! Talk to me about notebooks, people. Use the comments on this post, and/or Twitter posts containing “@notebookstories random giveaway” to tell me something about why you read Notebook Stories, why you love notebooks, what you write or draw in your notebooks, etc. I’ll pick 5 favorite responses from entries received before the deadline of Friday July 28, 2017 at 11:59 EST, and the winners will each receive a grab-bag of at least 4 assorted notebooks. Some of these notebooks may have a used page or two where I did pen tests for reviews, but otherwise they will be in new or like-new, usable condition and I’ll try to throw in some unusual items to spice up your collection! Have fun, everyone!
I read this blog because notebooks fascinate me. I write in my journal as a form of therapy and it keeps me sane. I also like reading about how people use them.
I first came across this blog not really because I’m interested in different notebook brands and such, but rather the people who used them. I especially enjoyed it whenever you shared notebooks which of people or even your subscribers. I think when people write in notebooks, they don’t exactly consider that their musings will be read in the future, which only makes it all the more interesting when they’re published.
Personally for me, my notebook is pretty much a diary. I keep a track of daily events as I’m quite forgetful. There’s also drafts and notes from my translating work which I keep in there. Right now, I want to change my writing style a bit to make the content more interesting, so I’m turning to Anne Frank for inspiration
I started reading your post for I am fascinated by the journals of artists, thinkers, doodlers. But then it became a source of information on sources for notebooks that I was not aware of, like the Kickstarter campaign for the Captain’s Notebook. I am a pen, ink and notebook geek. I love paper, still do about 90% of my creative writing in a handwritten form before typing just because I love the visual record it leaves. So anything that involves the word notebook, pen or ink I’m all about.
I love reading your blog to get info about different types of notebooks. I doodle, journal, paint, etc and have many types. Always love getting more info!
I’m a puzzle author and it’s hard to find good graph paper notebooks. That’s why I follow your blog as well as others.
I love your blog because it helps me know I’m not alone in my notebook obsessions! I love notebooks because they can hold immortality for us, if only we get over our fear of the blank page.
When my Mom died and we were cleaning out the house, we found dozens of notebooks, often just fragments, of poems, daily events, medical records and notes and sometimes pictures that we didn’t know about and events in her life she never talked to us about. I had started keeping travel journals many years ago, and didn’t know that my Mom had kept these notebooks. When Dad found that I was keeping a journal and travel notebooks, he told me I was just like Mom. Maybe no one will read my journals or see my notebooks. Maybe they are just messages in bottles thrown into the stream of time for some unknowable future.
First, being in Helena, MT there is not much ‘shopping’ for notebooks here. So I read to find out what I am missing and need to go online for. Second, it’s genetic. I’m a notebook junkie, so are my daughters and now my 4 year old grand daughter is joining in. Third, I use them for everything from a diary, scrapbook, idea and wish books, keep lists. You name it, I’ll put it in a notebook!
I need to keep notes for work. Used to write on legal pads; realised i’m really bad at filing. Like, 5 ft. high stacks of paper bad. Moced to black notebooks: preferably Leuchtturum 1917 or Rhodia Webbie, but Moleskine also works. You’ll never find me without a book and a fountain pen.
I guess I’m a bit of a voyeur. I enjoy looking at other people’s notebooks to see what notebook they’re using, what they write down, how they organize it, what writing implement they’ve used, etc. Thamks for the opportunity!
When I was a kid, the greatest thing in the world was getting my hands on a pristine, brand new notebook. Whether it was the gummed white paper pad from the junk drawer in my grandma’s house, a new green steno pad from home, or a new spiral notebook at the end of summer. I would flip through the blank pages, lining them up, thinking of what could be in them. Now I have so many. I am lucky that I can try out new styles, and fill up old ones too. I’ve used them as planners, journals, sketchbooks, and scrapbooks. It is my favorite thing to do, and they are my most valued possessions.
I draw comics in my spare time, and I love seeing what kinds of tools might be fun to play around with!
I am a writer, and I always have a stack of notebooks nearby for everything from collecting research to journaling. I love your blog for finding new notebooks to add to my collection.
I’m a Medievalist and technical writer. I’m returning to writing my drafts in long hand. That led me to discover fountain pens are easier to write with, and that’s caused me to start researching the best notebooks and paper to use with fountain pens. I found your blog yesterday, and am still reading through the back posts. and compiling notes about what notebooks to try.
I take note (of) books…give me an empty space…and I’ll fill it…coffee stains…pictures…words…I’m bound…to fill the void.
The first journal I’ve ever had was when I was 7. I am pushing 30 and I’ve never stop. I’m a notebook hoarder – I have one for books, one for dreams, one for creative writing… It’s happened before that I would rush through one to start another, or even forget it in a drawer. I have this weird phobia that I must document everything to keep my memories and my thoughts alive… I’m currently using a junk book as a diary and it’s almost over, so a new notebook would be handy!
Although I keep a separate written journal for thoughts and ideas, I use pocket-size notebooks to make small sketches of ordinary things I see every day — a recycle bin on the street corner, a man riding the bus, a fire plug. Later when I look back at both, the sketches are so much more evocative of my day and life than the writing is. Writing is internal, but sketching is external — a snapshot rather than internal dialog. I need both to get the full picture. Thanks for the giveaway!
Who doesnt like to have their addiction…uhm, i mean, fascination validated? ;) I just want to win them so i can see your pen test pages ;)
I take lots of notes: have a special notebooks for favorite quotes, book to read, books I have already read, books, records reviews also wines and beers lists and reviews, to-do-lists etc. etc. I wonder how I have not got lost in all of this :)
Good luck everyone! Good to now that there is a place like this blog!
I really enjoy the variety of notebook stories you find and the comments you make about them. Your enthusiasm and excitement is infectious. More than once, after I read an entry, I felt better for the rest of the day. (Full disclosure: You used a tip I sent in once, about the woman who kept notebook records of every dinner she and her husband enjoyed. That was very kind of you.) So, thank you for “Notebook Stories,” all your hard work, and the generosity of spirit that shines through it.
Journal collection Image Test
I love notebooks and always have. I still remember the first one I bought for something other than school. I was 10, and it had a stylized, colorful soccer ball on the front. I planned to write a ninja story inside – wrote three words, and became irreparably intimidated. I switched to plain notebooks after that, which I filled with abandon. By 8th grade I carried a stack of 10 notebooks (each with its own pencil jammed in the spiral) on top of my trapper keeper, each one for a different purpose (none for school), and the stack constantly slid off my desk and fell all over the floor. By 9th grade I cut back to a couple 3-subject notebooks at a time. In 10th grade I stole two notebooks from a friend. One was blank, and one was full of her writing, which I returned after reading it, but kept the blank one (she never mentioned it). I am haunted by this to this day, but I still have the same impulse whenever I see someone with a notebook. I want to know what’s inside. I love this blog because it simultaneously satisfies and feeds my curiosity about blank notebooks and filled notebooks alike. I’ve read this blog for years and have never found anything else like it, that tells me exactly what I want to know about the notebooks featured here. I was even once featured on this blog for my trunk containing nearly 100 spiral notebooks filled during high school (none with schoolwork) – a number of years ago. Sadly, over time I have cut back on my accumulations of both blank and used notebooks–I give away what I can’t use and discard what I no longer want to save–but I love notebooks no less for my now-relaxed stance on hoarding. There’s no point in trying to analyze it; there’s nothing like a good notebook.
I love your blog because of your reviews. I love to write, i.e., I just love the feel of a good pen on good paper and your reviews have helped me select notebooks to buy that I know will work with the pens I own. I use notebooks for everything-a collection of quotations, a collection of hand-lettering samples, a pocket notebook that I use as a doodle and zentangle pattern library, two mini notebooks that I carry in my purse to work on when I am stuck in a waiting room (one for 6 Word Stores and one for Haiku), a notebook with samples from all the pens I own, a journal for daily entries, a journal used as a Commonplace book, and a Kickstarter journal that will arrive soon that I will use as a bullet journal (a new project for me).
My favorite time of the year was “back to school” since it meant new pens, pencils, and notebooks! Being retired, you might think those days are over, but I still love the smell and feel of a new notebook and still look longingly at the new crop at back to school time. Alas, retirement does lessen income, so new ones are few and far between. I am an art journaler who loves to scribble, draw, paint, and leave my thoughts in my notebooks. I would truly love winning a new, or even better, a partially loved notebook. Perfect time of the year to get one!
I found your blog looking for information about different notebooks. I’m a nerd for stationery products, I have many notebooks for different uses. I use many of them to take notes from courses and classes, others for drawing and art journaling (which I started recently), or plain journaling as theraphy…and let’s be honest. Some are here just because they’re lovely!
I’ve been following this blog for a few years now, a regular website I frequent. I’ve been a longtime journaller/journalist, starting at the age of 13. I’m 25 now and my writing has yet to slow down.
I love the physical aspect of flipping to a new page in a fresh journal, figuring out which pen would work best for which entry, lining up spare pens and maybe an extra notebook for a particularly juicy entry, and letting it all flow. I feel naked leaving the house with anything less than 3 notebooks and 6 pens. I’m always observing and watching my surroundings, jotting down anything relevant I see. The freedom of being able to express myself without being embarrassed of my thoughts is a great feeling.
One of my favorite aspects of this site is the Notebook Addict of the Week. I think it’s fascinating to see other peoples uses for their notebooks, and the different brands that work best for different people. No two notebooks are a like, just as the people who use them. I’ve been meaning for a long while to post my own collection to the site, and it’s all about baby steps. First a comment, then a collection, then more and more.
Notebook collecting is a beautiful addiction and I am proud to belong to a great community of like minded individuals. Thank you so much for this website!
There’s a thrill getting a new notebook and I have good collection started. I enjoy looking through other peoples notebooks, as they makes my creativity flow and I learn so much from them. Especially, to let go of my fear of my own talent or the lack there of, freeing me. I use my notebooks to record everyday life, practice drawings, try out new art supplies, and urban sketching. I’m an urban Sketcher of 1 right now, and it’s okay. Maybe one day one of my notebooks will inspire someone, besides me, to keep a notebook. I hope it’s my son.
Recently I discovered a notebook from my childhood, formerly an old address book salvaged from the gutter. It was my first notebook. In seconds it shot me back to the basement corners of my house where I secretly documented in the tiny book, in the blank spaces between the addresses someone else had written, my school yard love affairs and ten-year-old angst. I hid my precious notebook in the gap between two bricks on the wall. I think this early deprivation in the late 60s, when notebooks were luxuries, have bloomed into a notebook and paper obsession – which I can now indulge. When I go thrifting, I seldom leave a notebook behind. On a recent haul, I clutched a stack of 87 school notebooks from India, to my chest like old friends. The Indian sun had bleached the notebooks’ aqua covers into a watery seafoam shade, and the inside pages were the color of beach sand. They were beautiful. I was grateful so many shoppers had left them behind, for me. Notebooks make my heart beat faster.
I read your site because I like to know I’m not the only one out there with this obsession. I also enjoy seeing what others use their notebooks for.
A new notebook: it stimulates all the senses… I’m not a snob, although I love a high-end tooled leather notebook, a marbled composition book will do nicely. I love them all, the slip-slide of the cover as I slide my hand across it’s surface, shiny perfection or tooled leather perfection, I love them both. The crack the spine makes the first time the notebook is opened, the creak of the pages as that new notebook smell wafts out – to me, better than new car smell! The pages, lines, graphed, dotted or plain waiting for my words, lists, sketches and doodles beckon me… What will this book be? What does it’s future hold?
I have books of lists of trips and places I dream of, destinations to go and see. Books of memories past, present and what is to be. Books of authors and books and music that inspire me. Poems and phrases that flit through my mind that haven’t yet found their permanent home. Books of sketches and doodles of my dreams and thoughts. Sketches and doodles of, well, nothing at all. But all these notebooks are important to me.
I have an organizational problem…every subject has to have its own home. In otherwords, each craft tecnique (many, many), each subgroup of Zentangle, and each journal (art, music, self-help, and Bullet to name a few), has to have its own unique notebook. I have to dress up each notebook with fancy embellishments, paint, and lettering. The problem is, I end up giving some of my notebooks away before I get to use them, because my friends and family love and want them, lol. So, my problem is that I never have enough notebooks. I also love to draw, so I go through sketchbooks like water too. This is such a wonderful giveaway! I wish everyone the best of luck and let you know the appreciation for you doing this is recognized.!!! Nroeder68@gmail.com
I am 67 years old and have been a notebook lover most of my life. I read your site and I covet the notebooks that others share. I am a list maker and notebooks keep my lists at hand, just where I want them.
I started writing in a journal because of a high school English teacher. I came back to writing by hand recently for the physical act of writing (so different from typing) and because of the wonderful notebooks now available. Your website has been a good aesthetic education – more than just a consumer one. Thanks
I love notebooks and this blog simply because the act of recording things in writing fascinates me. I remember the first time I saw the Jean Luc Godard film, Breathless, and one of the characters takes out a notebook and reads off what he was doing on one specific day at a specific time and it was so mundane and weird. That fascinated me and made me want to just write everything down. Now I write to keep track of tasks at work and I also have a journal I’m keeping for my daughter to give to her when she leaves the nest.
I read your online journal for various reasons, but mostly because like notebooks. As a former small press operator and before that, a Navy brat, paper was the way to record data, draw pictures, and make notes of what’s going. Now at 63ish, I find them more reliable than smart phones and just easier to operate; pencil, pen, notebook and done. Now if I could just find a candle that smells like a stationary store, I’d be happy.
I read your blog because I love notebooks. When I was very young and we were lucky enough to visit my grandparents I remember the few times we were allowed to see where my grandfather worked and upon his desk was all his paper work. I could see journals and correspondence galore. But what I also remember was his notebooks that he carried in his suit pocket along with his fountain pen.
When people spoke to him about things I would see him pull out his notebook and pen making notes to himself this was a memory I never forgot.
When I was able to buy little things for myself I remember that I would by the little notebooks with a coil on top (reporter style) and have a pen always accessible i.e. in my school bag. Unlike my grandfather I was not someone who had many interactions with others since I am rather shy. But inside that notebook I wrote down thoughts, observations of people, the world etc. It was my faithful companion. So to this day my notebook is the most faithful of companions to me.
It remains a place for me to confide in, brainstorm in, hide in, reflect in. I do carry another notebook that serves as my calendar / planner. But this summarizes my love of the notebook.
I just read an article about Oliver Sacks’s creative process. The man could not think without scribbling on a sheet of paper. That really resonated with me because I’ve found that I too work better with a notebook in front of me. But not only that, writing anything in my notebooks helps me relax, gather my thoughts, and readjust my outlook on things. I love writing longhand.
That is why I love notebooks, and that is why I love reading the notebookstories blog. I especially like the articles about how other people use notebooks. It gives me ideas on how to better utilize these beautiful tools. I also like to collect the wide variety of styles that are out there, so the reviews in this blog help me learn about what else is out there in notebook land.
I also love seeing the other collections that people post. It makes me happy that I am not at all alone in this passion for paper. I was even featured once! That was really cool. :-)
Thank you for keeping this blog going. It makes me happy to know that I am not alone in my enthusiasm for notebooks, and I enjoy reading every blog entry you put out!
When I accidentally discovered Notebook Stories on the Net, what surprised me pleasantly was that it was NOT the routine notebook-lover’s blog with loads of notebook information and long reviews done with the poor notebook under a microscope. It really had a personal touch — not following any particular format but treading all untrodden paths in the notebook universe and discovering new things with the blogger’s unique perspective. That made me stick on to it. Due to your efforts via Notebook Stories,
– I discovered notebook brands and notebook styles I never knew about
– I looked at others’ enviable notebook collections at close, and felt relieved about my own collection. Well, I thought, I have not done badly!
– I could peek at others’ notebooks and discover what they write and also, very importantly, HOW they use their notebooks
– I could impossibly cherish those wonderful notebooks that I know could no never lay my hands on
– I discovered how notebooks are constantly evolving thanks to the efforts of designers across the world: Square notebooks, open-stitched notebooks, kraft-paper interleaved notebooks…all mind boggling
– Finally, I fell in love with notebooks all over again.
THANK YOU, NOTEBOOK STORIES!
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My first personal notebook was a daily journal I started keeping in my school-final days. I could afford only a bound school excercise book for this personal journal. But it became my most precious possession at that time. I eagerly waited for nightfall, when I would cuddle up in my bed to record all those exciting events of the day that fired the imagination of a boy of fifteen years. Cuttings, pictures from magazines and newspapers punctuated my immature narrative, even movie ticket counterfoils! I adorned my notebook as grandly as possible, imitating typefaces (they were not called fonts those days) to create a graphic design for my notebook cover. This also signalled my first foray into calligraphy.
My next notebook of those days was a small longish notebook that I called FILMORANDA. It was a log of films that I had seen, complete with title, cast, technical credits, date of seeing, name of the movie theatre and my own rating on a scale of one to five. This notebook also had a cover displaying my own graphic design. I had to ‘manufacture’ this notebook on my own out of my school stationery, since I could not find one that met my own specifications.
These two notebooks of my boyhood days kindled a lifelong interest in calligraphy, graphic design of book jackets, typography and personalisation of stationery. Notebooks can do great things to you!
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Over the years, I kept other notebooks designed and manufactured in countries spanning the universe. I used simple ones and elaborate ones. I could afford to buy expensive notebooks. But those humble notebooks of my boyhood days had taught me three core truths about notebooks; and these have remained with me ever since. I share them with you here:
(1) A notebook is worthless unless it has been written in
(2) What matters is NOT how your notebook makes you to use it BUT how YOU use your notebook
(3) Even the humblest notebook can be rendered priceless by what is written in it.
Even when I buy the world’s best notebooks, I let these three core truths help me make my choices. I never let them go out out of my mind, never mind how glamorous the new notebook in front of me is.
So who were the winners?