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: #6921 in Office Product
• Brand: Moleskine
• Model: MBL17
• Dimensions: .50" h x 8.25" w x 5.25" l, .77 pounds

Features

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

Customer Reviews

Moleskines - Notebooks/Journals Perfected
I became interested in the Moleskines from reading (all of) Bruce Chatwin's books. I use the small Cahiers (pocket notes, ever-ready for jotting and aide de memoire for everything); the large, plain notebooks - the perfect journal, cannot be beaten; and the extra-large, square-ruled Cahiers for working on guitar designs, design ideas, construction ideas, floor plans, mechanism sketches, etc., etc.: they are my design journals.

This large notebook opens flat, the binding doesn't break, the covers are tough without being too heavy (for carrying), the elastic closure and page marker are very handy, especially the elastic. The weight of the paper is nice and its quality is wonderful: absolutely uniform. The pages feel good in your hand; writing on them is smooth and even - effortless. The size is just right, enough pages but still very compact. (The cahiers are perfect for your pocket.) Very tough and well-made. Just a joy to use. The Moleskines are a bit more expensive than cheaper options; but they are well worth it -- for anything that you intend to retain for a long time (why else write a journal?)

The feel, the sense of perfection, the knowledge of picking up and using the PERFECT TOOL for the job are intangibles that quietly enrich life. (Not to mention the feeling of touching history.) It's like the the perfect chef's knife in the kitchen or a perfectly-balanced razor-sharp chisel effortlessly peeling away wood. They are beautifully, simply elegant in their perfection.

Perfect comes up a lot in this review. There it is!

Moleskine - Journaling perfected
I bought this journal yesterday and I love it already. It has a good quality and sturdy cover, front and back. It has a lot of pages (192 I think it said)and the pages are really good quality. ie: When you use a gel pen, it doesn't seep through the pages like it does on some other journals. Also it's a great size, not too big but I wouldn't want it any smaller. It also has an expandable pocket in the back of the journal that you can put pieces of paper in. I think that this standard little black blank book is a great and it performs well. An excellent product. I will definately be buying from moleskine for journals from now on.

I really want to love Moleskine notebooks...
...but I don't. They're the perfect size, the perfect weight, there's that excellent handy little pocket in the back, and yet, and yet. The paper in the regular notebooks is too thin to stand up to liquid ink, so my writing bleeds through and I can only write on one side of a page. But the paper in the sketchbooks has some kind of coating on it that liquid ink beads up on and smears before it can dry. If they could make a sketchbook with uncoated pages that take bottled ink well, Moleskine would win my heart. But since they don't, they haven't. Sob.