It’s been a while since any new product from Moleskine excited me much. But I was happy to see that they’ve finally introduced some updated versions of the City Notebooks.

I have almost all the cities that were released when they first introduced these (in 2008, according to Amazon, even though the maps in some of mine are dated 2006). I love them– the London and Paris books have gotten the most use from repeated trips, while some of the others have been collecting my jottings over the years about places I hope to visit someday. (And to be honest, I bought a few for places I have no intention of visiting, some of which I haven’t ever opened. I wanted them anyway, just in case!) But having out of date maps has been a bit of a concern, particularly for transit systems.

In this re-issue, they’ve changed the design somewhat– I haven’t seen the new City Notebooks in person but it looks like they’ve enlarged and changed the design of how the city names are debossed on the spine. They’ve also changed the bellyband design, included colored stickers, added a red color to the back pocket gusset, and unfortunately, decreased the number of ribbon markers from 3 to 2. The section for your own freeform writing now includes lined pages as well as plain unlined pages. Lonely Planet is credited on the cover as the map provider. I can’t be 100% sure from the photos online, but it looks like they now have more cover overhang than they used to. My old ones have zero overhang, which I loved.

So far, the available cities are London, New York, Paris, Rome, Berlin and Hong Kong. List price is $19.95.

I will try to take a look at these in a store and see if it is worth buying one, preferably for a city that I haven’t written many notes about yet! That is the nice thing about these notebooks if you use them as intended– they collect your own notes about favorites places and experiences and recommendations, and as you update them, they become a history of a changing city as well as of your travels. At this point, I wouldn’t want to change out my well-used (but not falling apart) London and Paris notebooks just to get updated transit maps. If I ran Moleskine, (and hey, if I ran Moleskine, there are a LOT of things I’d change!) I’d make these a more modular product, with the maps in a separate booklet that tucks into the city notebook cover. Then you could reissue just the maps booklet every few years as needed and not force people to recopy all their notes. Or you could make the index section at the back the part that can be swapped out into a new notebook with maps and a blank page section, since the index is probably what most people use for the “keeper” reference notes about restaurants, museums, shopping, etc. and the blank pages might get filled up with journaling about a specific trip. Not only would this modular concept be more practical, I would think it would make more money for Moleskine: instead of people buying a $19.95 notebook every 10 or 12 years, you get them to buy a $19.95 starter kit and then a replacement module or two at $5-10 every couple of years. But perhaps there isn’t a large enough market of people who actually use these in an ongoing, repeat-visit way rather than wishfully thinking they will!

In any case, whether or not I ever get to travel as much as I wish to, I’m glad Moleskine is keeping the City Notebooks alive…