Word. notebooks - Review

I had a bit of stationery splurge recently (as you do) and bought myself a set of Word. notebooks, an Inky Fingers Currently Inked notebook (both from Pocket Notebooks) and (from The Journal Shop) an A6 Midori 2017 diary (bought in their recent half price sale).

More on the Inky Fingers notebook and the Midori diary another day. Today I want to review the Word. notebooks.

Pocket Notebooks stock a wide range of Word. notebooks - you can see their range here. The ones I bought were the Mist ones (see here for listing).

Front

They are the standard 'American pocket' size - 9cm x 14cm (the same size as Field Notes, Clairefontaine etc.).

So, where do they sit on the pretty/functional axis? Well, there are a variety of covers to choose from, all of which are very attractive (um, apart from the camouflage ones, in my opinion). I wouldn't be at all embarrassed to have this notebook on display, so I would definitely place them at the 'pretty' end of the pretty-functional axis (as a reference point, I would place Field Notes at the functional end).

The books come in packs of three, with 24 pages per book (48 sides). The books are staple bound. The corners are rounded. There is a simple paper band holding the three books together. I was a little disappointed with the finish - all three of the books were a little untidy at the spine-corners, with the covers each showing a card tag.

Back

The books are described as 'lined' but in fact, they have bullet-point markings at the left-hand side of each page. you could just ignore these if you wanted, but they do make a great bullet journalling/list making format.

The covers are card and on the inside of the front cover, there is a space for details, plus some guides on bullet journalling. On the inside back cover, there are hints about taking better notes. On each of the pages there are 19 lines/bullets, with a top margin of 16mm, a bottom margin of 11mm, and the bullet point margin is11mm. Line spacing is 6.4mm.

So... will they cope with fountain pen? In many ways, does it matter? They are obviously small books for jotting notes/lists and how many people do that with fountain pen? Well, quite possibly more than you might imagine! But, if you don't use a fountain pen, maybe it doesn't matter to you.

However, I do use a fountain pen so, here goes.

Well, yes... it performed exactly as expected.

Pen tests - front

Pen tests - reverse of page

The TWSBI and the Tombow were especially bad (they often do test a paper to breaking point) with both showing through significantly and also bleeding through. The Platinum (which is also a tough test) showed through slightly less, but did bleed through a touch. The Sheaffer Calligraphy was fine. Likewise the gel pen, the biro and pencil. My friend Stuart tells me he has no problems using fountain pens with many of the notebooks that I find less than great, so maybe I'm just heavy-handed? Anyway, I would probably use pencil for these books.

The texture of the paper is actually lovely for fountain pens (and pencils). I find gel pens scoot away from me when writing - they can be too smooth on the paper - so I will probably use pencil (or possibly biro) in them.

Overall, I do like these. They are attractive, well designed and lovely to use (if a bit FP unfriendly, at least for me).
4*/5