Product Description

This long-standing tradition was continued by writer-traveller Bruce Chatwin who used to buy his moleskines at an old Paris stationery shop in Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie where he would always stock up before embarking on one of his journeys. Over the years he had developed a veritable ritual. Before using them he would in fact number the pages, writing on the inside his name and at least two addresses across the world, and a message promising a reward for anyone finding and returning the notebook in case of it being lost. He even suggested this method to his friend Luis Sepulveda, when he gave him a precious moleskine as a present for a journey they were planning to undertake together in Patagonia. And there was no doubt as to how precious it was, given that at the time even the last moleskine manufacturer, a small family-run firm of Tours, had discontinued production in 1986. 'Le vrai moleskine n'est plus' was the short and curt statement of the owner of the stationery shop where Chatwin had ordered one hundred before leaving for Australia. Despite having literally swept up all the Moleskines he could find, they were not enough. Now, the moleskine is back again. This silent and discreet keeper of an extraordinary tradition, which has been missing for years, has set out again on its journey. A witness to contemporary nomadism, it can once again pass from one pocket to another to continue the adventure. The sequel still waits to be written and its blank pages are ready to tell the story.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3076 in Office Product
• Color: Black
• Brand: Moleskine
• Model: MBL14
• Published on: 1900
• Dimensions: .60" h x 5.25" w x 8.25" l, 1.00 pounds

Features

• More space to make notes. 240 lined pages. Imported from Italy. 5" x 8"
• Purchase in quantity today to best build your Moleskine bookshelf. The future is unwritten. Take up
• Each Moleskine has a rigid, oilcloth bound 'moleskine' cover, and the acid free paper pages are thre
• They also have an elastic closure and an expandable inner note holder made of cardboard and oilcloth
• A great way to get things done! Digest-sized for easy note-taking.

Customer Reviews

Useful, hardwearing, unique
Try to find a small, unruled, hardbound notbook for day to day use and you'll come up empty. There aren't many out there (I've been looking for years). Add to those durable covers, 100 pages or so of high-quality paper, an internal pocket for receipts and business cards, and a handy elastic band to secure the book from opening, and you have a really nice package.

I bought my first several Moleskines in 2003 just prior to a multi-month trip to Asia. I knew I wanted unruled paper (for maps and graphs and drawings) but was unsure about size, so purchase a large books, a small book, and the Volantes.

The small "pocket size" ended up being my daily companion. I carried it everywhere, every day, and found it extremely handy for all kinds of personal and business note taking. Sometimes the inside pocket was stuffed with ATM/credit cards, business cards, and various scraps and notes; I was actually using it as my wallet. It stood up well being carried in my travel bag or in my pocket for three months, daily, and despite the considerable heat and humidity of Asia. The elastic band kept everything together very nicely.

Other reviewers have mentioned the paper, but I found it to be very high quality with no bleed from one side to the next (using gel-point and ball point pens). Writing on both sides of a single page is just fine. And there's no ink smearing at all.

I ended up using the larger sized book as a day-to-day journal, and again quality of the paper made for an inviting daily session of writing. The Volantes use the same paper but are thinner, with less paper, no pocket, no elastic, and are softcover. The only benefit is that the last several pages are preforated for easy removal. I do wish Moleskine would do that with the pocket-sized book, I really hated tearing out a page to, say, provide notes to a friend or client.

Tough call
Are these journals a Five, or a Three?

These journals are truly something special. With the nice, firm cover; lots of pages; a pocket; and elastic to keep them shut, they offer a ton of function for compulsive scribblers.

But...they demand a little flexibility from the journalist in return. They don't handle all inks well, and in particular they handle very few fountain pen inks without significant bleed-through.

So if one commits to a Moleskine journal, one commits to a pen/ink combination that won't bleed--opening up both sides of the paper--or one resigns oneself to wasting the back half of each page.

For those willing to do a little research, though, the pen/ink combinations are out there (fountain pen users should look up Noodler's Black; for Gel roller users, Pilot's G2 refills also work splendidly with Moleskine).

If you want a solid, utilitarian journal, it's tough to beat these, especially at a reasonable price--but the bleeding pages will require adjustments. It's up to you.

Just what I have been searching for!
Many of us who have been searching for a great notebook for years have found Moleskine to be the best. A number of reviewers have commented that the price is too high. It is worth the price. After you buy a Moleskine you will never buy another brand. Amazon is a great place to purchase these books because they are not found in many stores.

My favorite characteristic of the Moleskine notebooks is that they stay flat no matter what page you are on. No matter what your profession, there is a notebook for you. They have music notebooks, storyboard notebooks, and even Japanese album notebooks for photos.