A technophile lawyer rediscovers the joys of pen and paper

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The stationery in the jury box

I was in court this afternoon on the motion calendar. There must have been a trial going on later in the afternoon, because the clerk was putting a steno pad and pen in each of the chairs in the jury box.

Like any self-respecting pen-and-paper addict fanatic maniac connoisseur, I had to stretch over the rail to try to see what the jurors were being given to take notes with. Boy, did I try to see.

I managed to make out the steno pad. I'm pretty sure it was a Universal brand steno pad.

The pen was a much bigger challenge. The pens were stuck through the rings of the steno pads. They resembled capped ballpoints, maybe something like a Paper Mate Write Bros. pen, but I really couldn't tell.

Needless to say (I think), this pen and paper combination just wouldn't work for me. So, I got to wondering. If I were in the jury box, would I find the inferior pen and paper so distracting that I couldn't pay attention to the case? Or, maybe it would be good to have inferior pen and paper. I might be able to pay more attention to the case. If I got to jot notes in the jury box all day with one of my favorite fountain pens in something like a Rhodia Webbie, maybe I'd find the writing itself so intoxicating that I'd pay less attention to the case.

Hmmmm . . . maybe I should make questions about stationery preferences part of my voir dire?*
_____________________________
*partial definition of voir dire from dictionary.law.com:
from French "to see to speak," the questioning of prospective jurors by a judge and attorneys in court. Voir dire is used to determine if any juror is biased and/or cannot deal with the issues fairly, or if there is cause not to allow a juror to serve (knowledge of the facts; acquaintanceship with parties, witnesses or attorneys; occupation which might lead to bias; prejudice against the death penalty; or previous experiences such as having been sued in a similar case).



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Friday, September 7, 2012

Booker-Palooza 2012 Review and Giveaway #5: Clairefontaine Back to Basics 1951 Vintage Notebook (Enties closed and winners announced)

Welcome to day 5 of Booker-Palooza 2012. This is the fifth — and final — givewaway of the week. And it's another "two-fer" — there will be two winners.

The Review


Retro something or other
 The first problem I had in writing this review was . . . fatigue. I've been working like crazy this week. Wrong week to host Booker-Palooza, I think! It's been fun, though, and I'm glad I did it. But I think my fatigue is going to show in this post. This will be a pretty lazy review.

The second problem I had in writing this review was what the heck to call this product. There are so many different words on the label, I wasn't sure. I'm still not. European Paper Company ("EPC") from which I ordered these notebooks, calls it the "Clairefontaine Vintage Notebook." Interesting, because "vintage" is one word that does not appear on the label. So I looked for this in the Clairefontaine catalog, and couldn't find it. So, we'll go with what I think is the best combination of words from the label: "Clairefontaine Back to Basics 1951 Vintage Notebook."

But it seems pretty clear that Clairefontaine was going for a retro feel. That is suggested by the "1951" and "Back to Basics" on the label, and the look of the cover as well.

Speaking of the cover, it looks in photos almost like it could be cloth, and the product description at EPC calls the cover "textured." All they mean, though, is that the cover has a rough laid finish, unlike the glossy finish you see on most Clairefontaine notebooks.

As you can see, there is a labeling area on the front cover. The back has a Clairefontaine logo, so there's no chance of confusing the orientation of the notebook. There is no pocket in the back, and the cover stock just doesn't feel that sturdy to me

This is a staple-bound notebook. I've never carried one of these around much, so I can't comment on its durability, but I always feel better if the binding is stitched.

The ruling runs to the end of the page and has no margin line, but each page does have some blank top and bottom margins. A lot of people don't like that, but I find the margin habit hard to break. Even when my notebook doesn't have them, I tend to leave some blank space at the top and bottom. At 8mm spacing (my measurement could be a little off), the lines are a little more widely spaced than I prefer.

As for the paper . . . I didn't even test it out. Why bother? Its 90 gsm smooth, bright white Clairefontaine paper, which is consistently awesome for fountain pens: no feathering, no bleeding, easy to write on both sides. The only downside to Clairefontaine's paper is that inks take a long time to dry on it (at least, in my opinion). I'm always amazed when a blogger reviews an ink and says it dries in 10 seconds, because I've had ink smear after 40 or 45 seconds on Clairefontaine paper (but I don;t mind because the writing experience is so great). The fact that I take all these things for granted and didn't test the paper means that these winners won't have to put up with a page of my scribbling, like most of my notebook winners.

I had second thoughts about ordering these at $13 until I realized that is the price for a two-pack. At that price, they are very reasonable. That $13 price is for the large size (5.75 in. x 8.25 in.). It also comes in pocket size (3.5 in. x 5.5 in.) at $9 for a two-pack. In either case, you can choose your colors.

The Giveaway


You can enter by email, by commenting, or by both. It's perfectly OK for you to enter both ways. Not everyone is necessarily going to take the time to do that (very few did on the first giveaway), so entering both ways may increase your chances of winning.

To enter by email, send an email to me at notebookeresqATgmail.com, with the following subject line:

1951

Your email must reach me by 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, Saturday morning, September 8. You may send only one email per person.

To enter by commenting, click in the comment field, then use one of the login methods displayed or click in the NAME field to comment as a guest. Please note that if you log in using your Twitter or Facebook account, I will not have your email and will not be able to contact you directly if you win. In that case, you'll have to return to this post to see if you are the announced winner and claim your prize. (If you are concerned about privacy, note that your email will not display in the comment.) Your comment must be timestamped no later than 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, Saturday, September 8.

Per my usual practice, the winners — remember, there are two winners in this giveaway — will be selected by generating a random number at random.org (in this case, two random numbers) and counting down the list of entries. Good luck!

UPDATE — WINNERS ANNOUNCED — Not only do we have two winners of this prize, we have our second double-winner of the week. Our first-time winner is Stan and our second-time winner is Kyle Curia. Congrats!

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Thursday, September 6, 2012

Booker-Palooza 2012 Review and Giveaway #4: Frictionless Planning Pad (Entries closed and winner announced)

Welcome to day 4 of Booker-Palooza 2012. This is the fourth givewaway of the week, with one more to follow, so make sure you check tomorrow.

The Review

Is there a prize for out of focus pictures?
Okay, so you're wondering why this is called the "Frictionless" Planner Pad. Does the pen really glide across the page that smoothly?

Well, before I answer that question, I need to point out that "Frictionless" refers to the company. The Frictionless website is all about reducing friction in your life — in your relationships, workflow, daily routine, you name it. These planning pads are one of two products offered for sale at the website to help you accomplish that.

Now, when I bought this, I thought to myself, "$12 seems kind of pricey, and I'm not sure what I'd do with that layout. I'll probably give it away on the blog." And here we are. Another prophecy fulfilled.

The layout is Cornell note-taking on steroids. A Cornell layout has a main notes area, a wide left margin for "calling out" key points, and a wide bottom area for summarizing the notes. The bottom area on this pad looks similar in size to other Cornell layouts I've seen, but the left "call-out" area is very wide, roughly a third of the page. (The Frictionless site describes the layout thus: "Just enough structure to help you plan, but not enough to get in the way.")

Gray and red boxes in top margin; grid in notes and call-out section

 The main writing area and call-out section have a grid ruling. I measured roughly 2.5 mm per square. Think of a typical Rhodia or Moleskine graph with each existing square made into four smaller squares. The summary area at the bottom is solid gray. (I could be off a little on the size of the squares. I found it easier to write on every other line on this paper than I do writing every line on a 5mm grid.)


The 50 sheets of 8.5 in. x 11 in. paper are, according to the website, "70lb. premium smooth uncoated stock to handle anything you can throw at them."  It pretty much lives up to that promise. I tried out half a dozen pen/ink combinations. The ink tends to spread, but without feathering, and more so with some inks than others. Platinum blue-lack delivered via a $3 Preppy seemed to do best; Noodler's Navy was the worst. Everything else was in between. But all of the fountain pen inks worked better in the call-out area than the notes area. The few gels, rollerballs, and ballpoints I tried all worked great on this paper.

You don't have to worry much about bleedthrough. First, because there isn't much (Noodler's Navy being the worst offender again.) Second, there's no ruling on the reverse.

The only thing I really disliked about this pad is that the backing is not very sturdy as a writing surface. Take this pad off your desk, and you'd better have some other surface to rest it on before you can write on it easily.

The glued binding was a nice change of pace from the usual perforated pages. Pages remove cleanly, and you don't have to be so careful about leaving some behind. It might make it a little less durable on the road, though.

The reason my giveaway prediction came true is that I cannot come up with a really good way for me to utilize the layout of this paper. Everything about the pad (with the exception of the backing) is great. If I had a practical way to use the layout, I'd definitely keep it.

The Giveaway

You can enter by email, by commenting, or by both. It's perfectly OK for you to enter both ways. Not everyone is necessarily going to take the time to do that (very few did on the first giveaway), so entering both ways may increase your chances of winning.

To enter by email, send an email to me at notebookeresqATgmail.com, with the following word, and ONLY the following word, in the subject line:

FRICTIONLESS
 
Lower case or upper case doesn't matter, as long as your email reaches me by 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, Friday morning, September 7. You may send only one email per person.

To enter by commenting, click in the comment field, then use one of the login methods displayed or click in the NAME field to comment as a guest. Please note that if you log in using your Twitter or Facebook account, I will not have your email and will not be able to contact you directly if you win. In that case, you'll have to return to this post to see if you are the announced winner and claim your prize. (If you are concerned about privacy, note that your email will not display in the comment.) Your comment must be timestamped no later than 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, Friday, September 7.

Good luck, and check back tomorrow for giveaway number 5 — the last giveaway of Booker-Palooza 2012! The last giveaway post will go up at 12:01 a.m. the morning of Friday, September 7, and entries in the giveaway will be accepted for 24 hours. Then, sadly, Booker-Palooza 2012 will be over.

UPDATE: The winner is . . . Millicent, who was also a winner of a Doane Paper A4 pad. I swear I don't know her, folks. She's just lucky this week. And, there haven't been that many entries, so the odds of a double winner have been pretty good.

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Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Booker-Palooza 2012 Review and Giveaway #3: Pentel Tradio Fountain Pen in Pearl Black Finish (Entries closed and winner announced)

Welcome to day 3 of Booker-Palooza 2012. This is the third givewaway of the week, with two more to follow, so make sure you check back daily.

Please note that because I screwed up the timing of this post and it published late, I will keep entries open for an additional 24 hours, until 12:01 a.m. on Friday, September 7.

Pentel Tradio Fountain pen, Black Pearl Finish

You're probably wondering how I decided to give away this this Pentel Tradio Fountain Pen after spending 28 bucks on it a year or so ago. The clue is in the last part of that sentence. I purchased this at least a year ago, tried it out for a day to write the review, then put it away and never got around to writing the review. Something tells me there are not legions of Tradio fans scouring eBay for a deal on this pen, so I figured, what the heck . . . give it away! So, here we go.

The Review


The Tradio is comparable in size to a Lamy Safari (though here, I have it pictured next to a Lamy AL-Star,) at least in length. But it tapers more at the ends and is thus less cylindrical. It feels uch smaller than the Safari, though, perhaps partly because of its shape and partly because it's virtually weightless. When you're writing unposted, there's no heft to the pen at all. Some people will like that, some won't.

While I'm comparing it to the Safari in size, I might as well make the comparison in a few other ways, especially since they are similarly priced (in fact, at Jet Pens, the Tradio and Safari are both priced at $26.00) and both could be considered "entry level" pens.

Pentel Tradio and Lamy AL-Star side-by-side, capped
Top: Lamy AL-Star, bottom: Pentel Tradio
The finish on the Tradio is a little fancier, probably designed to give the illusion that the pen has a gunmetal body instead of a plastic one. It looks more purple in the photos than it does right in front of you. (The picture of the cap captures the finish better.) But if you like shiny, metal-looking plastic, the black pearl Tradio is for you. The other Tradio finishes look, online at least, like they would be more obviously plastic. So, in the fancy-shmancy category, score a point for the Tradio.

The Tradio doesn't feel very durable, but I have to admit I never really put put it to the test. Perhaps it is because the pen is so light, but I just would not have the same confidence shoving this pen into my jeans pocket as I would carrying a Safari that way. It feels more breakable to me, but I have no scientific evidence to back that up.

The wire Safari/AL-Star clip is very distinctive, and I've read a lot of negative comments about how ugly it is, but I happen to like it in both form and function, and I do not like the Tradio's clip as much. The cap and clip on the Tradio are part of he same molded piece of plastic; there is no spring for the clip except for whatever physical properties the molded plastic has. While not quite as guaranteed to go over your pocket every time, the Tradio clip is nonetheless pretty consistent. But I have to give the nod to the Safari in this one.

Pentel Tradio fountain pen cap
One-piece clip and cap; view window near top
The Tradio cap, like that on the Safari, clicks on rather than screws on, and has one feature that I consider somewhat gimmicky: a window in the cap that lets you see the nib while the pen is capped. I'm not sure what function that serves, though I suppose it's possible you might have a Tradio rollerball in the same color and want to be able to tell the difference. If you're going to put a viewing window in a fountain pen, better to have it so you can view the ink level, like on the Safari.

The nib on the Tradio writes incredibly smooth for a pen at this price point. Really, really , nice. I actually like the feel of this nib much better than any on my Safaris.And it has an aesthetic leg up on the Safari nib as well, with some design on the nib and, according to Jet Pens at least, some gold plating. Unfortunately, the design of the nib was usually obscured by ink; this nib displayed lots of nib creep when inked with Noodler's Navy, but I didn't try other inks and for all I know, that same ink would creep on a Safari. But the Safari has something else going for it: the nib is easily changed, and relatively inexpensive replacement nibs (around $10 each, I think) make it economical to experiment with different nib widths, including three widths of italic nibs.

Overall, the Tradio is a solid entry-level pen or daily writer for those accustomed to fountain pens. It's a viable alternative to a Lamy Safari if you happen to like the design silhouette or finish better, want a fancier nib, want a smoother writing experience (though your mileage may vary on this consideration), or, like a lot of people, are turned off by the Safari clip.

I got my Tradio through Writer's Bloc; they still carry the pen in a few other finishes, but not black pearl.  You can find the black pearl finish and several others at JetPens. I've ordered a lot more over the years from JetPens than I have Writer's Bloc, but they are both reliable vendors in my experience.

The Giveaway

 If you'd like this pen, here's how to enter the giveaway.

Please note that because I screwed up the timing of this post and it published late, I will keep entries open for an additional 24 hours, until 12:01 a.m. on Friday, September 6. 

You can enter by email, by commenting, or by both. It's perfectly OK for you to enter both ways. Not everyone is necessarily going to take the time to do that (very few did on the first giveaway), so entering both ways may increase your chances of winning.

To enter by email, send an email to me at notebookeresqATgmail.com, with the following word, and ONLY the following word, in the subject line:

TRADIO
 
Lower case or upper case doesn't matter, as long as your email reaches me by 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, Friday morning, September 7. You may send only one email per person.

To enter by commenting, click in the comment field, then use one of the login methods displayed or click in the NAME field to comment as a guest. Please note that if you log in using your Twitter or Facebook account, I will not have your email and will not be able to contact you directly if you win. In that case, you'll have to return to this post to see if you are the announced winner and claim your prize. (If you are concerned about privacy, note that your email will not display in the comment.) Your comment must be timestamped no later than 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, Friday, September 7.

Good luck, and check back tomorrow for giveaway number 4 in Booker-Palooza 2012. Remember,  each of the giveaway posts this week goes up at 12:01 a.m. and the sign up period on each is only 24 hours, so you'll have to check back every day to make sure you don't miss your chance at something interesting.

UPDATE: 29 emails and 19 comments equals 48 total entries. And the winner is . . . drum roll please . . . [CYMBAL CRASH] . . .
Kyle, the third email entry received. Congratulations, Kyle!

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Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Booker-Palooza 2012 Review and Giveaway #2: Doane Paper A4 Writing Pad (Entries closed)

Welcome to day 2 of Booker-Palooza 2012. Today's giveaway is a "two-fer" — there will be two winners!

Odds are, you've seen Doane Paper before. Maybe not at the office or in your home, but if you follow my blog, you almost certainly follow Brad at The Pen Addict, for whom Doane Paper is the go-to paper for pen reviews. Today's review is of the Doane Paper A4 Writing Pad.

The Review


Let me say up front that I really admire people that come up with new ideas. (I'm a big advocate for intellectual property rights, e.g.) And Chad Doane had a good one: combine graph paper with lined ruling, and deliver the benefits of both types of ruling on a single sheet of paper. Clever, indeed.

Whether you will personally find it useful, of course, depends largely on what you do on paper. If you find yourself switching back and forth a lot between lined ruling and graph ruling, this could be just the ticket for you.

I think the "grid + lines" formula, as it's called on the Doane Paper website, is a better way of of combining the two functions than dot grid paper, which I think is also an attempt at merging them. I find it next to impossible to write in straight lines on Rhodia's dot grid paper, so I use it — the giant no. 38 size — only for drawing diagrams for project plans or to sketch out the relationships among different facts or concepts in a case.

That said, there are some things I would prefer were different on this pad, but they are purely personal wishes. Here's the layout, in a snippet of a picture from the Doane paper website:

Design detail from the Doane Paper website

You'll see that this layout means a spacing of 3/8 of an inch between the heavier horizontal lines. That's much wider than most lined paper; uncomfortably so if you're used to ruling around 1/4 inch or less. And it's really not practical to write across anything but the heavier lines. Unless your writing is very large, you're likely to see a lot of white space left on the paper, leaving you feeling like you could have made better use of the page real estate. I'd also prefer that those heavier lines were not quite so heavy. This would not only merge the "grid + lines" concept a little more, but perhaps make it feasible to write on every other line, rather than just the heavier ones.

But these comments are quibbles. The bottom line is that this paper does provide a great deal of versatility. (Hey, I'd also prefer Rhodia change their graph ruling to 6 mm or 1/4 inch, but I don't expect them to do it just for me.)

In any event, the company makes it easy for you to try out this ruling before you buy. PDF downloads are available at the Doane Paper website (look for the DOWNLOAD section near the bottom right of the home page). I suggest you take a good look around the website, which offers a number of notebooks and pads with the Doane Paper layout, and even some leather products.

As for other details . . . usually, I try to use my reviews to fill in the holes of the product descriptions you usually find online, so you have a better idea what you're getting. But there is little for me to add in this case, because the Doane Paper site does such a good job of letting you know what you're getting with this product, including the type of things that can surprise you with other brands.  Besides giving you the basics — telling you that each pad in the 3 pads-for-$11.95 package (a fair price, if you ask me) has 50 sheets of 20-lb. bond paper — you're also told that the paper is ruled on only one side (which I haven't seen since those green engineering pads I used at USNA, which were designed to be used on the reverse side from the ruling), and that while the entire pad is 8.25 in. x 11.75 in. (A4), each sheet is only 11 in. long once removed from the pad.  That last one, especially, is helpful. I've run across many pad descriptions that make it impossible to know what the dimension of the separated sheet will be.

The 11 in. length once torn from the pad is helpful if you're in the USA, because it is the same length as letter-sized US paper. No need to fold or cut to get it to fit in the file.

Even though you know from the product description that the ruling is only on one side, it still seems weird when you get the pad and see it. I'm not sure I get why the pad is designed that way, unless it's because the paper is so thin that it would be hard to have ruling printed on both sides unless it is lined up exactly with the other side.

If you're used to using a Doane Paper flap jotter and think one of these pads is for you, be forewarned (as you are, if you pay attention to the product description when ordering) that the paper in these pads is very different from the jotter. The former has 60-lb. paper; the pad has 20-lb. paper, so you're in for a big disappointment if you're not ready for that difference.

Unlike the 60-lb. paper in the jotter, which performed well with all sorts of inks and has a great feel to it, the 20-lb. paper in these pads has the feel of every day office paper and is not a good match for any ink that tends to feather or bleed. Most fountain pen inks I tried did plenty of both on this paper. Some of the rollerballs bled, too (the Tombow Object 0.7 mm being the worst). But none of the roller balls or gel pens feathered, and the gel pens barely ghosted through to the other side at all. Then again . . . does bleedthrough matter when there's no ruling on the other side anyway?

Overall, I really like the concept of this paper, and will find myself using it to sketch out relationships that do not require the room of the Rhodia no. 38. But I'm not likely to use it for straight notes; it would take me a good deal of time to get used to writing on lines 3/8 in. apart.

By the way, I tried to read up on Chad Doane a little more, and was very surprised to see that there was no Wikipedia entry either for him or for Doane Paper. How can that be? You can gain a little insight, though, through this post at Wantist and the post about him in the "What's on their desk?" series at Office Supply Geek.

The Giveaway

Entries are now closed. The following procedures will no longer work.

I am giving away two of these pads, one to each of two winners. If you'd like one, here's how to enter the giveaway. (Please note there are some differences from Monday's giveaway.)

You can enter by email, by commenting, or by both. It's perfectly OK for you to enter both ways. Not everyone is necessarily going to take the time to do that (very few did on the first giveaway), so entering both ways may increase your chances of winning.

To enter by email, send an email to me at notebookeresqATgmail.com, with the following word, and ONLY the following word, in the subject line:

DOANE
 
Lower case or upper case doesn't matter, as long as your email reaches me by 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, Wednesday morning, September 5. You may send only one email per person.

To enter by commenting, click in the comment field, then use one of the login methods displayed or click in the NAME field to comment as a guest. Please note that if you log in using Twitter or Facebook account, I will not have your email and will not be able to contact you directly if you win. In that case, you'll have to return to this post to see if you are the announced winner and claim your prize. No matter how you sign in to comment, and even if you comment as a guest, your email will not be displayed with your comment. Your comment must be timestamped no later than 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, Wednesday, September 5.

Good luck, and check back tomorrow for giveaway number 3 in Booker-Palooza 2012. Remember,  each of the giveaway posts this week goes up at 12:01 a.m. and the sign up period on each is only 24 hours, so you'll have to check back every day to make sure you don't miss your chance at something interesting.

UPDATE: Congrats to Plum Dragon and Millicent, each of whom will soon have a Doane Paper A4 Writing Pad on it way to them!

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Monday, September 3, 2012

Booker-Palooza 2012 Review and Giveaway #1: Levenger Wired Notebook-White Full Page Ruled (Closed to new entries)

Welcome, everyone, to the inaugural post of Booker-Palooza 2012!


Today's giveaway is the Levenger Wired Notebook-White Full Page Ruled. Usually, I link the name of the product to someplace you can buy it, but I don't see this product on the Levenger website anymore. I don't know if that situation is temporary or not, but I'm surprised to see it gone. I've been buying these for a while and usually saw them whenever I was just browsing and drooling the Levenger website. (While I'm mentioning the Levenger website, I should mention that the Labor Day Sale they have going is fantastic, and it goes through September 5. And, full disclosure: Levenger has provided products me free products (but not this one) to review.)

Anyway, on to the review.

The Review


I've had one of these notebooks opened on my desk at work for probably eight months out of the last year, using them mostly to keep my timesheets, but also using them occasionally to take research notes or to make notes for upcoming oral arguments. While it has its faults, I like it well enough to have bought seven of them when they were on sale.

It sits open at my right hand, so I can immediately jot down the tasks and time spent on my client matters, making for very accurate time reporting and detailed, accurate bills for my clients. There's nothing about the notebook itself that really improves my timekeeping, exactly, unless you count the fact that I enjoy writing in it so much. Maybe, on some subliminal level, that makes me more likely to record my time promptly. good not only for my clients, but for me, too, as billable time does not escape billing.


The reason I like writing in it is the feel of the paper. I love, love, love, heavyweight paper. Not so much for the writing, but for the handling. Once these sheets are removed from the notebook, they are a joy to shuffle, sort, or arrange. Since the paper is white, the weight of the paper (and slightly narrow dimension, as discussed below) helps my pages of handwritten notes stand out in a stack of other white papers.

The writing experience is quite nice, too. Most pens, except those with tips of less than 5 mm, tend to write very smoothly.

Levenger claims the paper is fountain pen friendly, and that was my initial impression of the paper. In my post last December year about the great variance in paper quality among various Levenger products, I wrote about this particular notebook:
This one is a standout. The white paper has great weight, smooth feel, great performance. No bleed through even with heavily saturated inks delivered through juicy nibs. This is awesome paper.
Unfortunately, that initial impression has not held up. I use a different pen and ink color virtually every day on my timesheets, sometimes with a few changes during the course of the day, so I've tried lots of different combinations on this paper. It's definitely hit-or-miss when it comes to handling fountain pen ink, at least with respect to how usable the opposite side of the papers is going to be. There's very little or even no feathering with most inks, but show through and bleed through vary significantly and are very unpredictable.  Some saturated inks barely show through and make it easy to write on both sides of the paper, while some less saturated inks through the same pen bleed through like crazy. The particular notebook I chose to test for this post seems especially susceptible to bleeding.
I've really got to learn how to take a properly exposed photograph. Sorry about that.
You also need to choose your other pens carefully. The Bic permanent marker (felt tip) I tried bled through. (I did not have a sharpie to try out.) Surprisingly, the brown Platinum Preppy (at the very bottom in the photo), despite being one of the broadest and wettest lines, showed through very little compared to the Bic. Finer gel pens did best, but finer points tend to stick a little on this paper and take away the smoothness. Some rollerballs do better than others, even with the same color ink.

None of this particularly bothers me, because I'm not worried about writing on both sides. But if you are, I suggest keeping a few pages at the back of the notebook as test pages to try out pen and ink combinations before using them elsewhere in the notebook.

I prefer the full width ruling on this paper to the annotation ruling found in so many Levenger products. This is especially helpful for my timekeeping, where I don't need to "call out" notes to the margin. Ruling across the entire page gives me plenty of real estate to track my time and to tally it up at the end of the day.

This is billed as a letter-sized (8.5 in. x 11 in.) notebook, but keep in mind that is the dimension of the paper before removing it from the notebook. Once torn out, the paper is a little narrower, approximating the width of an A4 sheet. It's just enough to be another aid in finding one's notes among other white papers in a stack, but not so much to make it difficult to include in a file of letter sized paper. Putting notes in the file is also made easier by the fact that the pages are perforated, so the raggedy edges created from tearing a page out from the binding is easily removed.

While a great desktop companion, this notebook is not very portable. Few letter-sized notebooks are, but this one has a couple of other factors working against portability.

First, this paper is so substantial that the 85 pages make the notebook nearly a half inch thick. That's fine if you carry a full size briefcase. But it can be a bit of a space hog when space counts, such as in a laptop bag or in my Levenger Briefolio, which is all I tend to carry (besides my planner) back and forth to work.

Second, it's not especially durable. I carried one back and forth to work every day (besides the space it took up in briefolio) for about 4 months. It didn't fall apart, but the covers, which are not especially stiff, got beat up a bit. And the wire for the twin ring binding is not especially strong; it eventually started to bend and separate,  so about a third of the back cover started slipping off the wire. That second problem is likely to be even worse if you remove pages as you go, because I think the rings are more vulnerable without a full notebook attached. (One indication regarding the lack of strength in the wire is that several notebooks arrive from Levenger with the end wires bent.)

If this notebook is gone for good, that's a real shame. I much prefer it to the wired notebook with multi-colored paper and annotation ruling, both because I prefer the full page ruling and because the colored paper and fountain pen ink don't really seem to get along, and it doesn't even feel good to write on the colored paper.

For all its faults —principally, the inconsistency of the paper when it comes to different inks, and the features making it unsuitable for portability — I still really like this notebook, at least to keep on my desktop. Enough to have ordered seven of them when they were on sale for $8 (they were normally $12).

The Giveaway

Entries are now closed. The following procedures will no longer work.

If you'd like one, here's how to enter the giveaway. Make sure you read through ALL these instructions, to make sure you are entered and possibly double your chance at winning, before you actually carry out any of the steps.

Send an email to me at notebookeresqATgmail.com, with the following word, and ONLY the following word, in the subject line:
WIRED

Lower case or upper case doesn't matter, as long as your email reaches me by 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, Tuesday morning, September 4. You may send only one email per person, but . . .

if you leave a comment on this post, that comment will count as a second entry as long as your email gives the name you used to comment. I need an email from every entrant because I need to be able to contact the winner, so a comment without a corresponding email will not count as an entry.

Good luck, and check back tomorrow for giveaway number 2 in Booker-Palooza 2012.

UPDATE: Congrats to winner Gerald!

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