Bookish people tend to like books with words already in them as well as books that are blank and waiting to be filled by their own hands. I know I do. You should see the shelf of notebooks I have collected over the years, oh wait! You can, sort of:

I couldn’t get all of them in the photo, the shelf stretches off to the left out of the frame for almost the same length that is in the photo. The vertical pile on the right are unused notebooks waiting their turn. You are looking up at them because they are on a high shelf in a closet. They are in a closet not because I don’t want them to be seen, but because I don’t have enough shelf space outside of the closet on which they might reside.

You can read the rest of the post, which includes a video of someone comparing Moleskine and Leuchtturm, and a lot of comments discussing notebook brands and usage, at A Ramble on Notebooks | So Many Books. Check out the rest of her posts about books, too!

Read more here.

Charles Hadden, comment #160

Congratulations Charles!

Now as for everyone else who entered, I’m sorry you couldn’t all win, but not all of you lost, either! One of my favorite things about this blog has been discovering the generosity and enthusiasm of other notebook addicts. I’m not the only one who sometimes realizes the collection has gotten a little out of hand and decides to share the wealth. A reader named Lia contacted me offering to pass on some notebooks she wasn’t going to use herself, and she took the initiative to find the PO Box addresses of two people who entered the random giveaway and is sending them some notebooks! So we have a couple more winners after all.

This isn’t Lia’s first act of random kindness towards notebook lovers. She has occasionally planted a notebook in a public place, leaving it to be found by someone who will give it a new home:

“[Above] is a photo of the recent Moleskine notebook I left at my local library. I like leaving nice messages inside, so when someone finds it they can be sure they can take it home with them rather than bring it to the lost and found. I’ve left a few notebooks in libraries before, usually on a stack with my favorite books. This way I have the ease of imagining that someone who likes the same books I do will find the notebook. Perhaps the librarians find them, which is alright too.

I’ve heard interesting stories of people forgetting a notebook on a train, and a stranger was kind enough to chase them down and return it to them. It really takes some careful planning to find a good place to abandon a notebook, and hope someone will find use for it in their lives. I’ve found journals sitting in the garbage on the side of the street before, in usable condition, and I took them and used them for class notes when I was in school. “

I love the library placement, right between Leonard Nimoy and Anaïs Nin! I may try this myself now and then. Maybe I’ll leave a little note in the notebook asking its new owner to submit a photo to this blog or tell us how they’re using the notebook! I would love to hear more stories from anyone else who has set notebooks free in the wild!

Thanks again to everyone who entered the giveaway, and to Lia for making it even more fun!

To celebrate the forthcoming Van Gogh at Work exhibition and the 160th anniversary of the great artist’s birth, the Folio Society and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, are producing the first-ever facsimiles of the artist’s sketchbooks, limited to just 1,000 copies. The four intact sketchbooks, which span much of Van Gogh’s life, contain some of his most intimate creations – drawings, sketches, poems and everyday matters such as prescriptions and addresses – that offer fascinating insight into Van Gogh the artist and the man. We have one set of four replica notebooks to give away.

Unfortunately the give away is only for UK residents, but you can buy a set from the Folio Society for only… $845!!

Drool.

Via Observer Magazine Competition: Win a set of Van Gogh sketchbooks! | Life and style | The Observer.

You can buy them via this UK online shop.

via Grafika Notebook Set — Desk Accessories — Better Living Through Design.

As I was tidying my office and creating space, I started to make a pile of my notebooks. Can anyone have ‘too many’ notebooks?? I love stationery and always find myself buying pretty notebooks and adding them to my collection – some so pretty that I never intend to actually write in them.

I am intrigued by the red notebook with the black elastic. It looks almost like a Handbook Journal, but I don’t think that’s what it is…

Read more at My New Office | Victoria’s Paperie.

See more at Blog: The Future is Drawn – Doodlers Anonymous.

First impressions:
I love the cover designs, in cool colors and camouflage patterns. They came packaged very beautifully in a box with brown crinkly paper filler, and I think I actually said “ooh!” when I opened it up!

The covers feed sturdy and the whole notebook seems well-made. The staples are aligned correctly on the spine, and nothing is crooked, except for the corners, which are nicely rounded but cut a bit diagonally in some cases, as if the notebook slipped a bit while the corners were being cut. The corners are rounded to a larger diameter than Field Notes or Moleskine.

Inside the front cover there is space for identifying info, and a guide to how the page layout is meant to be used. The designers of these notebooks meant for them to be used to help manage task lists. Each page has 18 lines with a dotted circle at the left. You can indicate the status and importance of the task by circling or slashing the circle. It’s a pretty simple system, and not original to this notebook (see here for one example) but for those who like to manage their task lists this way, it will be handy to have a preformatted page that makes it easier.
The inside back cover has a list of fun facts, just to fill space, I guess.

The paper feels great to write on, nice and smooth. Most of my usual pens worked beautifully, though the Pilot fountain pen seemed to feather out a bit. Bleed-through was slightly worse than average for most pens, though for some reason, the Super Sharpie, always the worst bleeder of all, bled slightly less than I would have expected. Show-through was about average. The paper is acid-free.

The format on these is a standard 3.5 x 5.5″, shown below next to a pocket hardcover Moleskine.

At $9.99 for a 3-pack, these are priced in line with the competition. If you are a list-maker, check them out– you can buy them at Word. Notebooks | Cool Material.

And of course you can also try your luck in the giveaway. I will select 3 lucky winners from entries received in the following ways:
On Twitter, tweet something containing “@coolmaterial” and “@NotebookStories, and follow “@coolmaterial” and “@NotebookStories.”

On Facebook, “like” the  Notebook Stories page  and the Cool Material page, and post something containing the words “Word Notebook” on the Notebook Stories wall.

On your blog, post something containing the words “Word Notebook” and “Notebook Stories” and link back to this blog.

The deadline for entry is Friday May 10 at 11:59PM, EST. Good luck everyone!
And please remember to check my posts on Facebook and Twitter for an announcement of the winner.

But after some diligent searching, I did find this:

According to this blog post and this one, this is one of Picasso’s actual sketchbooks as displayed in the Musee Picasso in Paris. You can see that it’s a pocket size notebook, with squared pages, and there seems to be a sign of an elastic closure at the bottom edge. On the right edge, there seems to be a pen loop– I’m not sure if this is the kind of “moleskine” the Moleskine brand is modeled after, but it doesn’t bother me that they left out that feature. I do like the red edges, though.
I’ve found some other examples of similar notebooks used for sketchbooks, such as the one on this page, shown below:
.
Again you can see the same pen loop on the edge and signs of an elastic, though this artist used the book flipped over so it was on the left.

Here’s another one:

According to the description at art.com, it belonged to William Adolphe Bouguereau.

Here, you can see a small sketchbook of Van Gogh’s, but it doesn’t seem to be the same type of notebook:

I wish it was easier to find these images online… but not being able to is a good excuse for a trip to some museums in Europe!

I have an addiction to notebooks.

I can’t stop buying them!

I haven’t counted up exactly how many I have, but I think it’s around the 20 – 25 mark. I have all sorts of notebooks, and I don’t even have anything to write in them! I’m not a student anymore so I don’t have any lecture notes I could use them for.

I really should stop buying notebooks, because I have no need for them. I keep seeing new notebooks I like though, so let’s outline some of my favourites.

Here’s some of the collection:

Read more and see more photos at Calm Banana » My notebook addiction.