Posts filed under Notebook Reviews

Kokuyo Campus Notebook Shizuku Semi B5 Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

School is on the horizon--or has already started for some of you. And with that comes the best season for Pen Addicts--school shopping season, where an abundance of stationery flows from around every corner. If you are a student, or provide for students, it's time for that bountiful harvest of papers and pens. I have two semesters of school left, and two kids in school, which I consider permission to indulge.

My dislike for most spiral notebooks is well documented, which is one of the reasons that these Kokuyo Campus notebooks with the glue binding are some of my favorites. This pack of five notebooks has a pattern inspired by water drops, with each book a different color to make different volumes easy to find. They're very pretty--calming, with more flair than a standard plain cover.

The cover is thin cardstock and each book has 30 sheets of Kokuyo's 70gsm paper. Kokuyo's paper is very good. It doesn't feel like it's going to be fancy, but it holds up well. It impresses me every single time, and the sense of wonder never gets old. With non-liquid ink and fine pens I saw no hint of misbehavior, though there was some feathering on my test page when I used several kinds of very broad and wet nibs. There was no bleeding, though. Even the Sharpie struggled to bleed through. This is the first time I've had feathering with this paper, and I didn't see any in other spots, so I'll have to revisit my thoughts on this after more writing.

The paper format is excellent, with a space for the date on each page, and a dotted line layout, which is a wonderful compromise between grid and lined paper. The lines are present for even writing, and the dots make outlining look neat and organized. All the lines are faint enough, though, that you can choose your own adventure if needed. The lines are 6mm spaced, with dots every 5mm. This layout really works for me, and I wish it was more widely available.

The pack of five notebooks is listed at $19 on Jetpens, which is a great deal, since the individual B5 notebooks are $4.25. It's a fantastic price for paper this good. I'll make great use of these in my last few classes, with hope that the nice paper and pretty covers helps sooth my blooming senioritis.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Posted on August 4, 2022 by Sarah Read and filed under Kokuyo, Notebook Reviews.

Maruman Mnemosyne US Letter Size Notebook Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

I've long been a fan of Maruman Notebooks because of their excellent quality, and the Mnemosyne line is well-known for the plain black cover and double spiral binding. No matter what size you need, the Mnemosyne notebook line probably has a size that fits your needs.

The latest size to hit my desk is a unique one for the US market: Letter. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this notebook and the size, but let's focus on the stuff that it shares with all the other Mnemosyne notebooks of all sizes and shapes.

Maruman Mnemosyne US Letter Size Notebook

The famous black cover, twin ring binding, and yellow accents really set the Mnemosyne product line apart. There's nothing else like it, and that makes for some recognizable branding. I'm pretty sure that if you're reading this site, you've probably at least seen one of these notebooks online or in person — or you may own one or several already. If you've never tried a Mnemosyne notebook, you should definitely add it to your list. When it comes to spiral bound notebooks, they're at the top of a lot of lists.

The build quality on these notebooks is solid. The front cover is a sleek plastic that withstands plenty of wear, and the back chipboard cover is rigid and protective. The yellow accents on the cover and on the first page really add a nice pop of color to make these notebooks instantly recognizable.

The notebook paper is superb. At 80 gsm, it strides a great balance between being thin and capable of handling all sorts of inks and writing instruments. There are 70 sheets in the notebook, and they feature a 1/4" grid rule. The top of each page has a couple of blank areas for the title and page number, but the ink used for the labels (same ink as the grid lines) is a light gray that is easy to ignore if you don't want to use them.

Each page has a micro perforation at the top, which makes it easy to remove pages from the notebook with a clean rip. Due to the micro-perforation (lots of little holes), tearing a sheet out is easy and rarely results in any accidental tears on the sheet itself or ripping the paper out of the binding. It works great, and it's also really satisfying to tear sheets out due to how smooth it is.

The grid lines are only on the front of each sheet. The back is completely blank, which can be great if you want something with zero lining. Since there isn't much show-through on this paper, you can easily use both sides of the page without issues.

I've tried every pen I own on this paper over the years. It handles most things with ease. Aside from brush pens, some pigment markers, and really large, wet nibs, I've never had any problems with this paper. Lines are crisp, dark, dry as expected, and hardly show through on the back side. I haven't noticed any feathering or bleeding with the many inks/pens I've used. There's a light coating on the paper that makes it feel smoother when writing (it feels great, by the way), but it doesn't seem to affect dry time much at all. Perfect balance.

Let's look at the unique aspect of this notebook: the size. The US Letter size is a limited edition for the US market, and for now, only available on Amazon. It measures in at 279 x 226 mm, or 11 x 8.9 in. When you tear out a sheet, it measures 8.5 x 11 exactly, so the extra 0.4 accounts for the binding.

Alright, cool. It's a notebook from Japan that uses a US letter size for the pages. This isn't common, which is why it feels a little weird. Also, it's a USA limited edition, so all I can do is scratch my head and wonder why. I already have an A4 version of this notebook, and you can't tell which is which unless you compare them to each other. I'm a little perplexed why Maruman would set up the machines to run a limited edition notebook size for the US market, but here we are! If you want this special Letter size notebook, you have to pick them up from Maruman directly on Amazon.

Regardless of what size you pick, rest assured that this will be a fantastic notebook with paper that is really nice to use.

(Maruman provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Posted on July 13, 2022 by Jeff Abbott and filed under Maruman, Notebook Reviews.

Pebble Stationery Co. A5 Cahier Art Deco Limited Edition Notebook Review

Pebble Stationery A5 Cahier Art Deco Limited Edition

Last week I reviewed the Pebble Stationery Co. Leather Notebook Cover, and the A5 Cahier Art Deco Limited Edition is the one designed as the perfect insert for that cover. You could fit two of these in the cover, but they're slim enough that you could also fit one of these and an additional thicker notebook as well. They'd work great in almost any A5 folio designed to hold inserts.

It's a standard sized A5 cahier with a cardstock cover and 120 numbered pages of 52 gsm Tomoe River Paper. The cover is lovely, with an art deco pattern and a bit of glossy finish with some gold accents. It looks fancy. The cardstock has enough thickness that it can work as a writing surface on its own, and it does a good job protecting the pages without becoming too worn. The binding is sewn along the entire length of the spine, which helps with its durability as well. There are no loose pages after a few weeks of writing, and with a bit of training, the pages lie open flat. Inside the front cover has space to write your personal info as well as notes about the contents of the book. The edges of the pages are painted gold, which looks great with the gold accents on the cover.

Of course, the Tomoe River paper is always a plus in a notebook. I did, however, have a bit of feathering with a wet ink in a broad nib on some pages. I am not certain, but I suspect this is new generation Tomoe, as the coating feels a bit different to me from the paper in my other Tomoe notebooks. It was also just an issue with that one pen and ink combo, so it's possible that the culprit is not the paper. I did not have any bleeding and very little showthrough, even with a FA flex nib, so the paper is still very good overall. The faint 5 mm dot grid provides just enough guidance without being imposing.

This notebook is just the right size and proportion for a class notebook, a commonplace book, a bullet journal, or for meeting notes. At $14.99, it's a little pricier than similar styles, but it's also a little fancier. It's also a limited edition, so if its fanciness suits your fancy, grab one!

(Pebble Stationery Co. provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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