Cambridge Imprint notebooks

Notebook samples from Cambridge Imprint

Recently, I was asked by Cambridge Imprint to review a couple of notebooks. I should hasten to say, these notebooks are not currently available to buy from them - they were prototypes which they wanted feedback on.

I have a number of Cambridge Imprint notebooks (yes, I know, I haven't reviewed any of them on here yet, but I will). I have a large square softback notebook and a set of three pocket-size notebooks. I really loved the look of their stuff, but wished they did a lined notebook that was bigger than the pocket size, but not as big as the square one. They do have medium-sized notebooks, but they were all plain, not lined. I contacted them about whether they had any plans to produce a lined one, and they sent me these two books to have a look at! They are the same size as the plain ones (18.5 cm x 12 cm; paper size: 18 cm x ~11 cm).

The two they sent me were covered with the Letterpress Harebell paper, and the Elephant paper. There's no plastic (hurrah!) and the papers are absolutely gorgeous!

Elephant paper

So, what do I like about them and what don't I like?

Loves:

Well, I love the covers - the papers are all amazing (have a browse of their site and see what glorious papers they have). They're hardback so will resist all but the most significant dings. There's a small label on the front to indicate the contents, which is a lovely touch.

Letterpress paper

The paper. I've only used fountain pen in them (and I took out a page to do the tests, as I don't like leaving them in). The paper is fairly toothy, so would work well with pencils too. Writing wasn't as smooth as in a Clairefontaine book, but was a nice experience. My sharp calligraphy nibs jagged a little, but they jag on everything except Clairefontaine! The stubs were great and regular nibs were fine. There was some good shading going on as dry time isn't super-fast (lefties may need to take a little bit of care). There was no feathering, bleed-through or show-through.

Front

Back

Size: Not so large that they would take up too much real-estate on a desk or in a bag, but big enough that you're not starting a new page every second. At a page size of ~180 mm x ~110 mm, they're fairly close to B6 (which is 176 mm x 125 mm).

Ruling/margins: They're pretty narrow ruled, which suits me (even with a chunky nib) but if your handwriting is large, you might struggle. Ruling is 6 mm, with a top margin of 15 mm and a bottom margin of 9 mm. 7 mm might appeal to a wider range of people? As I say, they're fine for me!

Things they don't have, but I don't care:

There's no contents page, page numbering, page markers or a pocket in the back cover. None of these things are deal-breakers for me. If I need page numbers, I'll add them in. If I want a contents page, I'll leave some blank pages at the start/end. I rarely use the back pockets - they can make the writing experience a bit lumpy.

Things I'm less keen on:

The first and last page are glued to the end-papers and there's quite an overlap. I'm never keen on glued spines, because they're hard to open the book out flat, and this is the case here too. I'd rather they would fall open properly - writing in the inner pages will involve a bit of brute-strength!

I hope that they'll make these part of their main range as they're just beautiful!

My day to day diary for 2019

In my last post, I said how I was staying in my Field Notes sized TN from Meadowgate Leather as my everyday carry. I only need a month to view calendar while out and about, but I need a larger diary to plan my days, so am finishing up using my standard sized TN diary (that I've used all year) until the end of December.

For 2019, I'm staying in the Field Notes sized TN and using the A5 Everyday Diary from Box Clever Press.

I can spend a ridiculous amount of time choosing a diary (often time I can't really spare, but hey ho). To work well for me, I need a diary that:

• is about A5 size
• has a week to a view with the days in vertical columns (so I can time-box)
• has equal sized columns for Saturday and Sunday (my life isn't less busy, just because it's a weekend!)
• has the week starting on a Monday (who in their right minds splits the weekend so that it bookends the week? It's a weekend)
• has space to list tasks for the week
• preferably also has space to list Most Important Tasks for each day
• would help me with planning my week/month/year
• preferably is pretty/attractive because I have neither the time nor talent to do it myself but like the look of them
• will lie flat on the desk
• preferably has 2 ribbon markers, but at least one

Not much to ask for, is it?? You can see why I can end up trawling shops and the internet for yonks, trying to find this mythical beast.

Well, this year I have struck gold!! I've got the 2019 A5 Everyday Diary from Box Clever Press.

teNeues Cool Diary 2019 Weekly diary review

I've been umming and awwing about what to use in 2019 (see here for latest witterings) and bought myself a small diary to use in a Field Notes size Traveller's Notebook. The one I bought is a 9 x 14 cm TeNeues Cool Diary weekly diary (that is how the capital letters go in the label...). I got mine in blue, but it comes in a variety of colours.

It arrived the other day, so here's my review.

Cover:
The cover is a hard cover with nothing more than 2019 in silver on the blue on the front and the teNeues logo on the reverse. The cover is soft-touch synthetic. I'm not a huge lover of that, because I'm trying to reduce my plastic/non-recyclable purchases, but it's understated and fairly classic. That said, I'm in two minds over just removing it altogether, because it takes up thickness in the binder and the pages of the diary don't need protecting if it's in the TN cover.

Poach My Lobster Notebook Review

Many thanks to Stu from Nero's Notes for sending me this notebook to try out. This is my honest review of the notebook.

Recently, I've been shifting away from the A sizes of notebooks (A4, A5, A6 etc.) and turning more often to the B sizes (B5, B6 etc.). B5 (176 x 250 mm or 6.9 x 9.8") is an excellent size for me for writing/planning books and B6 (125 x 176 mm or 4.9 x 6.9") is a great size for a handbag-notebook. The notebook by Poach My Lobster is 128 x 202 mm, or pretty much exactly 5 x 8". Although not a true B6 size, it's a pretty good size for my bag.

The corners are rounded and the paper is glued in (making the flattability score for me pretty low).

The label on the back said the following:

128 pages of Fedrigoni Arcoprint Edizioni Avorio 1.5 100gsm
Cover printed on G. F. Smith's Colorplan Claret 270gsm with buckram embossing
Books Good Enough To Eat™: designed in London, printed in Italy, made by Poach My Lobster.

The pages are blank throughout.

The Cover:
I really like the cover. There are a variety of covers available (see the full listing on Nero's Notes here). I was sent the one with the quote about wine. The colour is a dark red (my crime-writer-brain is saying the colour of dried blood, but I realise that might not be a selling point for everyone 😄). It's a sturdy enough cover that the pages are protected, but not solid or heavy. And, it doesn't appear to contain plastic (though the notebook did come shrink-wrapped in single-use plastic that I almost opened an artery trying to remove). The logo of a lobster on the back is the only branding on it.

The Paper:
The paper is lovely to write on, both with fountain pen and also pencil. It's quite toothy, so calligraphy nibs may catch a little, and the paper is matte and so there isn't much sheen to fountain pen ink (though there is shading). I quite like the fact that the paper is blank as it means I can write in it and also sketch in it (yes, I do sketch occasionally - hence the wide array of pencil tests to come!). As this is more likely to be an 'out and about' notebook (as opposed to one used for planning, or for writing books), this makes for a good combination as I can scribble down thoughts and ideas, but I can also do sketches and drawings. If you prefer lined books because your writing stays neater, rest assured that a line-card shows through pretty well, to keep you on the straight and narrow.

Pen/Pencil Tests:
As you all know, these can make or break it for a notebook with me. The pens I currently have inked would present quite a test to the paper (and many a notebook would have failed abysmally!).
This paper sailed through. No sign of any feathering, absolutely no bleed-through and absolutely no show-through, either. 'Pen Tests' was written with my Pilot Parallel pen with 1.5 mm nib - almost everything fails with this, even Clairefontaine at times! This paper - absolutely fine. No feathing or even a hint of show-through, despite the fact it's a wet pen! The paper was a little too 'grabby' for my Rosetta Mosaic, and for the Parker Italic (though almost anything except Clairefontaine is too grabby for that little pen!). Beautifully smooth with my bamboo pen (bought as cheap as chips from eBay and one of my absolute favourite pens - always writes beautifully and is so easy to rinse out!).

The pencil tests were great - there is enough tooth in the paper to make sketching fun (no slippy-slidey shiny stuff!). I'm actually really looking forward to drawing in this wee book.

Pen tests (apologies for low exposure - it's Scotland!)

Reverse of the page - no show-through or bleed through

Pencil tests

Overall:
I am very impressed. The paper is fabulous, the cover great (and quirky) and the size just right. The only thing I'm slightly less happy about is the low flattability. Maybe I'll just have to be a bit more brutal with it, but it currently does not lie flat.

Thanks again to Stu for sending me this. As I say, all views are my own and reflect my honest opinion of the book.

You can get these notebooks from Nero's Notes - click HERE to go to the full range.

Leuchtturm lined slim softcover notebook

My good friend Stu, from Nero's Notes sent me a couple of notebooks recently. One was this little number; the other was from Poach My Lobster, and a review of that will be coming soon. Although these were a gift, these are my honest views on the notebook.

Stu knows my penchant for slightly differently sized books (see all my recent posts on B5 and B6 stuff). I find that A5 can be a little bit big for a handbag, but A6 is a bit too small for me. I've slowly been shifting towards B-sizes, using B5 for writing notebooks (see here, here, here and here), and looking at using B6 for a Traveller's Notebook (see here). So both of these notebooks were a brilliant size for me.

The Leuchtturm softcover slim notebook measures 125 mm x 190 mm (making it almost B6 size:125 mm * 176 mm). It would fit in my B6 TN cover, but it would be as tall as the cover (probably making the stringing a bit tight - I don't know, I've not tried it). But, I don't want this for my TN, I want it as a satellite notebook to keep in my handbag! The one I was sent is lined, but they are also available in dot grid or plain.

6 for £6 from Nero's Notes

Loving the new logo!
(Another book as well as the 6 for £6 is in this wrapped selection)

6 for £6 (or, as it appears on the website, "six 4 six") does what it says on the tin! For £6 you get a random selection of 6 notebooks. As Stu describes it on the site:

Discount Sales are few and far between at Nero's Notes. We do our best to keep prices fair all the time. This is our lucky dip box. As the name suggests, there will be at least six books for six pounds. That might be two three packs, or it might be six singles or any other combination.

Great value for money, perfect as a stocking filler or just for a little treat. Who knows what extras Nero might throw in...

Despite having more small notebooks than I will possibly ever use in a lifetime, I decided to check this out. After all, I'm not sure that any of the books on the site are only a pound to buy!

As ever, the parcel arrived with everything beautifully wrapped. I love the logo for Nero's Notes on the stickers. In the picture above, there's also a Nero's Notes leather notebook which I'll be reviewing soon.

So, what were the six books that were in the "six 4 six"? Well, either Stu can't count, or Nero sneaked in an extra, because I had seven books! There are no pen tests for any of the notebooks - partly because I haven't had time to do them and partly because the post is more to show you the kind of contents you might get.

The seven books were:
[tl;dr An absolutely brilliant bargain. Now read all of the post!]

Rosaliny Green World 4 Assorted Softcover B5 Composition Notebooks

I've been on a bit of notebook-buying spree. After renovating an old Filofax Deskfax to create a B5 sized Traveller's Notebook, I (naturally) needed to buy lots of B5 notebooks!

B5 is just about the perfect size for me, I think. I find A5 a little on the small side, but A4 a bit too large sometimes. B5 sits between those two sizes at 176mm x 250mm (c.f. A5 at 148mm x 210mm and A4 at 210mm x 297mm). And of course, it's the perfect size for my renovated Deskfax.

I use my Deskfax as a writing TN - if I'm travelling, it has enough cards and pockets and so on, that I don't really need to have anything else in my bag, and the covers are sturdy enough to lean on if there isn't a table. (You can see what features the writing TN has here.)

In the early stages of writing a book, I use small, slim notebooks to bounce ideas around. Some (most!) of these ideas may never make it to a full book, but I like to keep them anyway. Once I think an idea has enough legs to make it to being a full novel, I need a thicker book (like the Zhi Jin notebook, reviewed here). I quite like the slim books made by Penco or Stalogy but saw some slightly more attractive slim notebooks on Amazon, while I was looking at the Zhi Jin.

The Rosaliny Green World notebooks were £8.99 from Amazon with free delivery and looked like a nice set of notebooks, so I ordered a pack. They took forever to arrive, not helped by the first order getting lost. Once the seller sent a new set, they took about 10 days to get here and there were some very sweet post-it notes in the parcel too (which I forgot to take pictures of and have now given away).

The notebooks have a reasonably sturdy card cover with quite sweet designs of trees/leaves and cats.

Inside, there are 38 pages (76 sides) and they are sewn rather than stapled. 37 (74) of these are lined; the first/last sheet is plain.

On the lined pages, there is space at the top to note the date and also the day of the week. The very top and bottom lines also have small marks on them to facilitate drawing in columns, should you so desire. The spacing of the small marks is a slightly random 10.8mm (which doesn't seem to relate to a sensible fraction of an inch either). Line spacing is 8mm, with a top margin of 15.5mm and a bottom margin of 14.5mm. There are 28 lines (if you're happy enough to use the bottom line; it would be fine - the small marks are unobtrusive).

How well did they stand up to fountain pen? The paper is described as "100gsm acid-free high quality recyclable ivory paper". I'm not sure if they mean "recyclable" (which surely, all paper is?) or "recycled". The paper does feel as if it is 100gsm and is very smooth.

Amazingly, I don't have a zillion fountain pens inked up at the moment, but I tested the paper with what I had, and with a few other pens I had to hand. I used one of the plain pages at the back of the book to test the pages. I don't imagine the lined paper will perform differently.

The results are a bit mixed...
I tried a 1.1mm stub nib and wet ink combo (usually a bit of a killer in pen tests), plus another italic nib, a standard m nib and then some Pilot Hi-tecpoints and a ballpoint.

The good news...
There's no feathering of the fountain pen ink at all and the paper is smooth to write on.
There's no bleed-through of the stub nib or the italic.

The bad news...
There is bleed-through with almost all the other pens except the ballpoint. The Tombow Object nib was the worst; the Hi-tecpoints were a bit better.
There is show-through for everything. Depending on how much that bugs you, this might be the deal-breaker. For me, the pens I use the most are 1.1mm stub nibs, so the fact these worked so well and show-through isn't too dire, means that I'm happy enough to use them, but might not buy them again to be honest.

Pictures (click to enlarge):

Pen tests

reverse, showing bleed- and show-through

zoom in on the reverse

Overall:
These are sweet little books which will definitely get used for initial notes on books or ideas. As for value for money, compared to the Penco notebooks, you get more pages (74 lined in this c.f. 60 in the Penco) for less money (£2.25 per book here, c.f. The Journal Shop selling Penco at £3.99). But... paper quality is significantly lower than the Penco.

As for comparing to Stalogy, the only UK seller I can find is Tokyo Bike (the listing for the Stalogy is here). They have 68 pages and are £5.50 (I originally got mine from somewhere else and they were £2.50. I wish now I'd bought more!). Again, paper quality on the Stalogy is better, but they are a lot more money per notebook. If you're US based, I think there are more options for purchasing them.

The covers are attractive and sturdy and I like that the pages are sewn rather than stapled. Paper quality lets them down, but at £2.25 each, I shouldn't really complain (I mean, Moleskine get away with charging a lot more money for notebooks and the paper is much worse!). I like the headers with the space for the date (and day), plus the marks to facilitate drawing columns. Line spacing suits me, though those with small writing or a penchant for fine nibs may find it a bit wide.

Overall, I quite like them!

Zhi Jin B5 notebook - review

Having renovated a battered old Deskfax into a beautiful B5 Traveller's Notebook, to use for writing, I was in search of some slightly thicker B5 notebooks. I have some slim ones (60-80 pages - Penco and Stalogy for example) but I'm getting to the stage with the new novel, where I'm going to need a chunkier book to hold more notes.

B5 isn't the easiest size to buy in the UK, which is largely wedded to the A-sizes (A4, A5, A6 etc) but I love B5 as a notebook size (and B6 as a smaller notebook size, to be honest). Leuchtturm do a B5 dot matrix book (and I've just snaffled a couple of those from Bureau Direct. They were reduced as they were discontinuing stocking them, so I don't know how long they will available). There is a Moleskine notebook which is approximately the right size, but hell hasn't frozen over yet, so I won't be buying it.

On Amazon, there are a couple of B5 books that I've been looking at, but this Zhi Jin one caught my eye as it had colourful covers and a rainbow edge.

I bought the blue cover and it's a fabulous, vibrant blue - Mediterranean sea colour on a sunny day. But what's it actually like as a notebook?

Inky Fingers Currently Inked - Review

This is a notebook I should have bought years ago! I got it from Pocket Notebooks and this is how it's described in the listing:

Keep track of what pens you have inked, when you inked them, and with what you inked them. The Inky Fingers Currently Inked Log will allow you stay on top of your pen rotate and maintenance by providing a simple, unified place to keep track of how you use your collection.

Inky Fingers notebooks feature 44 sheets of environmentally-friendly and sustainable wheat straw paper, which is made from the agricultural byproducts of wheat farming. Our 80gsm paper has a bit more texture than other fountain pen friendly papers, for those who enjoy feeling the pen on the paper. It is also more absorbent, resulting in shorter dry times without feathering or bleeding through.

• Pocket Notebook Size
• 3.5″ wide by 5.5″ high. (89x140mm)
• 44 Pages
• Slots for keeping track of up to 132 inkings
• Fountain pen friendly and environmentally sustainable 80 gsm wheat straw paper
• Rounded corners
• Glossy cardstock cover

As you'll have seen from my notebook reviews, half the time when I do a pen test, I can't remember exactly what is inked in a pen and also, when I'm refilling pens, I can't quite remember what an ink looks like in writing (rather than in the bottle). Many inks dry to a very different colour than their wet colour!

Hence, I bought myself this logbook.

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.

Stationery box from Pocket Notebooks

Stuart, from Pocket Notebooks very kindly sent me the April box of stationery to play with. You can get these specially curated stationery boxes monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly for £21/box. This is what it says on the site:

Personally curated by Stuart, this is a blend of category leading brands and outliers. Each edition will be different and designed to delight. All packed into a letterbox-friendly box and sent through the post.
A box might contain two three-packs of pocket notebooks. It might contain a three pack and larger format book. It might contain all sort of stationery related 'extras'.
Limited Editions will be included in some of the subscription boxes.
Second payments and beyond are all taken on the 5th of each month, and boxes sent on or around the 15th. Normal shipping policies apply.
For every curated subscription box shipped, £1 will be donated to The National Literacy Trust.

 You can also buy the box as a one-off, which takes the price up to £22.50.

So, what's in the box? Is it worth it? Should you sign up for the box immediately? (the short answers are lots of goodies; absolutely; and absolutely!)

Review of New Darkstar Collection Notebooks

Stuart from PocketNotebooks kindly sent me two of the new notebooks in the Darkstar collection. These would make brilliant Bullet Journal notebooks!

So, what's new? I reviewed their original notebook here which was a lined notebook (that came in packs of three). The new notebooks have both a black and a kraft coloured cover and the paper is grid.

Darkstar is a UK based company and the notebooks are made in the UK. They come as a set of three notebooks in a pack, currently priced £8. I got one prototype of the Black Space version and one prototype of the Nomad to try.
[click on any picture to enlarge]

Darkstar cover - Black Space

As before with deliveries from PocketNotebooks, the attention to detail was great. I was addressed this time as "The Awesome Dr Fleet" and there was the PocketNotebooks slogan stamped on the back of the parcel: Forget the app, there's a pocket notebook for that. Inside, the notebooks were wrapped in purple tissue paper with a branded sticker, plus there were two small packets of sweeties (that took me back to childhood).

Nicely wrapped!

So, where do these notebooks sit on the "Pretty-Functional" grid? I don't find them especially 'pretty' but they do have an understated class to them. The black cover is a matte black and the only branding on the cover is a small, satin-finish black star on the front. It's easier to see the branding on the kraft/Nomad cover. Whereas before, the first page of the book also had the Darkstar branding, these open straight into the grid pages on the notebook.

The Nomad notebook, as well as being a lot easier to photograph to show the logo, has a slightly toothier feel to the card. Both the Black Space and the Nomad versions are lovely. In my original review, I commented on the finish being a bit untidy. In these versions, the trim is much better, and the small staples are holding the pages better.

Darkstar Nomad

There are 28 pages (56 sides) in each book in a pretty heavyweight paper (100gsm, same as in the originals). The corners are rounded. Page size is 10cm x 14cm.

The Grid
The grid is actually made up of tiny crosses, though at a distance, to my 40+ year old eyesight, they look like dots:

From a distance

Close-up

Centre-cross to centre-cross is 4.9mm vertical and 5.6mm horizontal (not sure why it's not 5mm in each direction...):

As you all know, the deal-breaker for me is how they perform with fountain pens. I used the central fold of paper to do the pen tests (mostly because almost all of my notebooks have the first page taken up with pen tests and it's harder to remove the first page than the central pages).

General writing feel:
The paper was pretty much the same feel as the original notebooks. The paper was reasonably toothy though more so for some nibs than others. I actually have a killer/probably unfair collection of fountain pens inked up at the moment - either massively broad/calligraphy/wet nibs or ones that always seem to bleed through on the majority of papers. As a consequence, I also tested some hybrid gel-ink pens and some others. The Jetstream uniball zipped across the paper and felt almost frictionless. (For someone so used to writing with a fountain pen, this came as a surprise!)
4.5* out of 5

Feathering:
Well, the pens I used were an evil test!  The Pelikan Script is inked up because I've been writing certificates for Rotary and I fully expected this to be a no-no! However, I was more surprised to see other pens also having issues, especially as they hadn't (with same ink/nib combos) in the original notebooks. The Pelikan did pretty well, really! None of the uniball pens had any issue. Whereas the Jetstream black zipped over the paper, the light blue (finer ballpoint) didn't.
3*/5

Zoom-ins on all of the inks

Given that these are grid, rather than lined, I suspect there are many out there who will eye them up for a small bullet journal and they would be excellent for this. To that end, I also tested them with my collection of Staedtler Triplus Fineliners, as these appear to be a staple for many bullet-journallers as well as the gel pens I have on my desk.

Reverse

Show-through:

Fountain pen test (reverse)

Close-up (fountain pen reverse)

Actually, not as bad as I feared! The very wet/broad nibs have shown through but the others aren't too bad. There is more ghosting than with the original paper however.
3.5*/5 for FP

The Fineliners only showed through to the other side a little.
4.5*/5

Bleed-through:
There is some bleed-through, of the wet nibs: Pelikan, Tombow and Conklin all bled at least a smidgen. Not too horrendous.
4*/5 for FP
There was no bleed-through at all from the Fineliners.
5*/5

Flattability:
The books are pretty much as good as any stapled notebook for flattability. They don't open flat and stay flat without persuasion, but it's easy to make them lie flat!

Overall:
I liked the notebooks. Granted, they're not as pretty as the Papio books, but not everyone will want that. There's a classic, understated feel to the cover that makes it suitable both for business as well as casual use. The paper stood up better to Fineliners than to fountain pens tests which will make them even more suitable for bullet journals.

Rhodia Rhodiarama - review

Stuart from PocketNotebooks kindly sent me a Rhodia Rhodiarama A6 Webbie to review. The notebooks have 192 pages of 90g ivory brushed vellum paper. The hard cover is leatherette in a series of bright colours. There is an expanding pocket inside the back cover, an orange ribbon bookmark, and an orange elastic closure. They are available on the Pocketnotebooks site for £7.50.

The one I was sent was turquoise and the contrast between the turquoise and the orange was very appealing. Where is it on the pretty/functional grid? The bright colours are attractive and the contrast with the ribbon/elastic is also good with the turquoise. That said, the orange doesn't go well with a lot of the other colours (the pink/orange combo is especially horrible!).

Front cover

Back cover

There is the Rhodia logo blind embossed in the middle of the cover (picture from Pocketnotebooks.co.uk as I forgot to take one and it's now rubbish lighting in Scotland!)

When you open the cover, there's a zebra!

Inside

The notebooks is 9.5 x 14.5cm, the paper is cream and paper size is 8.8 x 13.9cm with rounded corners. Line spacing is 6mm with a top margin of 6.5mm and 22 lines per page. Ruling stops about 4mm from the outer edge of the paper and 8mm from the inner edge.

The ruling is a bit narrow for me (as you'll see in the pen tests where my letters almost overlap) but then, I'm using stub nibs! One thing that did annoy me though was the shortness of the ribbon. It's only just longer than the page.

Woefully short ribbon!

In the back of the book is a pocket for slipping small items in, with more zebra patterning.

Back pocket

So, what's the paper like? Well, it's Rhodia so it's going to be better than many, but as Stuart has kindly pointed out in the past, I can be really picky!

General writing feel:
The paper is very smooth and fountain pens glide easily over it. Drying time is a little longer than many papers so if you're a left-hander who tends to smudge their writing, be aware of this. It's not too bad but if you write very quickly there's a possibility of smudges.

Feathering:
None. And there's some fabulous shading going on there too!

Show-through:
There is some ghosting to be honest. I wasn't expecting any but there's some.
4*/5

Bleed-through:
Again, I wasn't expecting any but there is some. Not so bad it would stop me using the page, but not none either. It's more noticeable with a light backing to the page than my desk (which is brown).
4*/5 

White background to the page

Dark background to the page

Flattability:
It's a hard back book so naturally won't lie as flat as soft-backed books with many fewer pages. The pages are sewn (I pulled one out to do the pen tests and have managed to pull the stitch undone, though the pages are still holding well). It can be persuaded to lie flat but won't lie flat on its own. It doesn't however need as much effort to hold it flat as the Write Notepad & Co. books I reviewed in the last post. 
3*/5

Overall:
This is a nice, robust little notebook. It isn't one for the back pocket (at least, don't sit on it and end up giving yourself sciatica!). The writing experience is good and there are lots of pages to the book. The ribbon marker could have done with being a bit longer - it feels stingy - and I'm personally not a fan of leatherette but otherwise, it's great.

My thanks to Stuart at Pocketnotebooks for sending it to me to review.

Disclaimer:
I was given this notebook free to review. However, this is an honest review and not influenced by it being a gift.