Posts filed under Notebook Reviews

Mr. Rouge Voyageur Notebook 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!)

This lovely Voyageur notebook from Mr. Rouge was handmade with pride in Mexico. It has a soft, textured leather cover with no branding, which combines a minimal look with the rustic elegance of natural materials. It looks like the kind of book you'd find on the shelves of a secret castle library, which fits the brand philosophy--that this is the notebook for travelers, writers, and dreamers. I fancy myself all those things, so it's no wonder I like this notebook.

The leather cover is glued to a thicker endpaper, and then 180 sheets of dot-grid paper are sewn into the binding, a hearty serving of pages for those with lots to write. The notebook lays open flat even without any training. At the end of the notebook, there's a page for your personal information, and a glued-in paper folder.

The book feels great in the hand. It makes you want to write, which is, in my opinion, the best quality a notebook can have. I take big notebooks like this as a personal challenge, and I want to fill them with words.

The leather cover retains a lot of its natural texture, with the rough, unfinished side along the inside edge. It has that good leather smell, too.

The downside of this notebook will be, for some, the paper. It has a nice crispness and feels good to write on, but it doesn't handle fountain pens very well. A fine nib with a light ink does okay, but anything wetter tends to bleed through. A spot where I accidentally dripped ink bled through four pages. Pencil felt amazing on the crisp paper, and ballpoint and gel pens worked very well. This notebook seems to crave a wood-case pencil, though. It's the perfect paper for it, and the smell of the leather with the woodsy smell of the pencil made me feel like I was cosplaying as some romantic poet writing her heart out deep in the forest. I dig it.

Mr. Rouge offers a variety of notebooks, which are available in the US via Amarillo Stationery. The Voyageur is available blank, lined, or dot-grid and in black, light brown, or dark brown, and sells for $26. That's a fantastic price for such a large, well-made notebook. It may not be the top choice for those who exclusively use fountain pens, but for the times I want to write with my beloved gel pens and pencils, this is the perfect notebook.

(This notebook was purchased from Amarillo Stationery at retail price for the purposes of this review.)

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Posted on September 22, 2022 by Sarah Read and filed under Mr. Rouge, Notebook Reviews.

Odyssey B5 Notebook Review

272 pages of lay-flat-bound, original, 68 gsm Tomoe River paper in a vegan leather, hardbound, space-themed cover. That's it; that's the review.

Okay, a bit more detail, just for fun.

Odyssey Notebooks caught my attention entirely based on their looks. They're gorgeous notebooks with elegant, understated designs that are fun and interesting. This Saturn cover has the ringed planet lightly debossed in silver foil on a cream-colored vegan leather. The hard cover is thick and sturdy with rounded edges. There is an elastic band to hold the book closed.

Inside, the endpapers are grey-brown with light grey constellations. There's an accordion pocket inside the back cover, and the spine has two satin ribbon bookmarks--one gold and one a champagne color. There's a title page with room for personal information, followed by all those good Tomoe pages. Each page is numbered, with a dot grid in light grey. It's enough guide to use it as lined or grid, but faint enough to disappear if you want to treat the page as blank. The B5 size is perhaps my favorite size for writing. It's big enough to let your ideas spread out, to keep a lot of information visible at once, or to let a mind map of ideas run wild, but it's still small enough to fit in a purse or mini backpack.

The paper may not need a review, especially as it's becoming harder and harder to find, but it's wonderful. Light, crisp, and impervious to anything you throw at it. Not even the Sharpie dotted through, though darker inks do show some ghosting. It really is the perfect paper, and as much as I'm enjoying the quest to find one I like just as much (which involves using lots and lots of notebooks), I still haven't found anything that's its equal.

Odyssey has a number of notebooks in various sizes, colors, page counts, and designs, some with this wonderful paper, others with paper for artists. There are even softcover varieties. Designs range from space themes to mythological figures. This particular notebook sells for $38, which I would consider to be on the pricier side for a notebook, but I can certainly see how the quality of this item has resulted in a higher cost. It's a reasonable asking price for what you get. But I wouldn't wait, if you want the same paper experience. No doubt the notebooks will still be excellent with whatever paper replaces the TR when it runs out--every feature of this notebook is lovely, paper aside--but this incarnation is too good to miss.

(Brad purchased this notebook at full retail from Lemur Ink at the 2022 Atlanta Pen Show.)

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Posted on September 1, 2022 by Sarah Read and filed under Odyssey, Notebook Reviews.

Rhodia GoalBook - A Quick Review

(Kimberly (she/her) took the express train down the fountain pen/stationery rabbit hole and doesn't want to be rescued. She can be found on Instagram @allthehobbies because there really are many, many hobbies!.)

Ok, after my last not-so-quick “quick recap” of the DC pen show, I pinky swear this article will hold true to its title. (Disclaimer: “quick” for me means less than 1500 words, lol)

A #askTPA question came up recently where a listener was looking for notebooks for bullet journaling with white and not cream paper. My ears perked up because I had an answer and was yelling at the phone when the episode came on. The Rhodia GoalBook comes in white paper!

What is the Rhodia GoalBook? It is Rhodia’s contribution to the bullet journaling market. It is a notebook with numbered pages, an index and more. The notebook features 240 pages (224 of which are numbered), an elastic band to keep the notebook closed, a pocket in the back cover, and 2 ribbon bookmarks. There are 6 pages for Contents/Index) and two different undated calendars to help with planning/important dates. Until 2020, Rhodia only made the GoalBook with cream paper. Now it is available in white and cream paper in a wide variety of notebook colors. I bought my white paper GoalBooks in 2020 and 2021 from Cult Pens in the UK because they were the only place that had them when they first came out.

The paper in the GoalBook isn’t the same as what you’d find in their dotPad, but rather the 90gsm Rhodia R paper which is a bit nicer. The paper is fairly fountain pen friendly, but it can feather with wet inks or flex nibs. In general though, there is minimal ghosting and bleeding with most fountain pen nibs and inks and I rarely have to worry about ink dry times.

I am currently using the white GoalBook, but I took an old cream GoalBook to duplicate my Currently Inked log. Note that the colors of some of the inks on the cream pages may be a little different due to the pens being inked longer than when I made the entries on the white pages (some were light due to needing a slight dip in water or were darker due to evaporation in feed).

*Quite a bit more ghosting and bleedthrough on cream.*

As you can see, with most of the pens, the papers behaved similarly but for some inks/nibs, the cream paper feathered or bled through more than the white paper. I don’t see any difference in the paper (besides the color) but the white paper feels smoother and a touch more coated than the cream, which would explain why it behaves a bit better, but folks who dislike coated paper may not like the white paper as much as the cream.

The Rhodia Goalbook is available in soft cover or hard bound, comes in dot grid or graph (though not all colors/options are available in graph) and of course, with cream or white paper. Some versions have an attached pen loop (I haven’t yet figured out why some do and some don’t). Cult Pens’ prices for the GoalBook range from $22-29 USD (or £21-27 GBP with VAT) though you may be able to find the white paper GoalBook elsewhere in the states these days.

One last thing, my bullet journal is very much a functional one that I don’t spend a lot of time making it pretty or for Instagram posts (though I occasionally post some matchy match pen/ink to-do lists). This means that it doesn’t bother me too much if the paper ghosts or feathers from time to time. The fast dry time, coupled with the index, numbered pages and now with white paper makes it my go-to bullet journal notebook. (I’m currently on GoalBook #7, books #1-5 have cream pages and #6-7 have white.) So if you’re looking for a generally fountain pen friendly bullet journal option with white paper, give the Rhodia GoalBook a try.

PS - Less than 1000 words - I consider that a success!

(Disclaimer: All products have been purchased by me. The GoalBooks with white pages were purchased from Cult Pens and the cream ones were purchased from both Cult Pens and Lemur Ink.)

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Posted on August 26, 2022 by Kimberly Lau and filed under Rhodia, GoalBook, Notebook Reviews.