Moleskine and other writing stuff.

Me? I have an addiction.

I'm addicted to nice books of blank paper and nice writing tools.  I keep a bit of an offline journal -- it's mostly the historian in me that forces me to do it.  Countless times we want to know more about a people at a specific point in time, but we can't find journals to know what their lives were like.  What they ate, what they believed, how they reacted to things... it's mundane, but it's really necessary in the discipline.  As such, I keep a bit of a mundane paper journal in which I record such things.

It's not in a particularly mundane book, though.  When I was in Toronto at University, I had to buy a big roll of paper, and some coloured construction paper for a decorating contest.  I suppose I could have gone to a stationery store like Grand and Toy, but it was closer to walk down to Spadina and College and go to the art store there.  While in there, I saw this... I guess it was meant to be a sketchbook or something, but it came in a nice leather jacket, with a button clasp and a place to keep a pen. Perfect.  I've been using it for the past 5 years.

However, when I got here, I realized that I probably wouldn't be able to buy refills for it (I could buy the bound-but-not-covered book that goes inside them at that art store at that time, but it's 14 time zones away), so I was on the lookout for things to replace it once it was full.

Bought a nice silk-covered one when I was in Beijing.  Bought one that's little more than home-made artisan paper stitched together and held in place with a piece of bamboo when I was in Hanoi.  Each time, I've also picked up a nice pen; a pen that feels good in the hand, that has weight, that writes smoothly but not too smoothly, that doesn't smudge since I'm a lefty, and so on.

The newest item I've been coveting is a Moleskine-or-reasonable-facsimile.  I quite fancy a ruled moleskine notebook, as well as the 'info book'.  Another thing I quite fancy is the City Notebook.  It seems like a great idea.  You go to a city, you have this city notebook as a barebones guidebook of sorts, and you fill in the stuff you want to.  Find a great restaurant? Write down the info, mark it on the map. Find a great hotel? Do the same.  Find a little gallery off in a side street that no one really knows about, and hey, it's better that way? Mark it down.  Next time you come to the city, or a friend comes to the city, you've already got a perfect little resource to help you enjoy your stay.

There're no Asian cities covered yet, which is a bit of a shame, and makes the books of no particular use to me at this point in time, but when I visit/move to Europe, you can be sure I'll be acquiring the relevant one.

In the meantime, I'll keep writing my mundane offline journals in these books, and start pricing Moleskine products online.