Miskatonic University PressNotebooks get a lot of discussion in the stationery world: check notebook at the Well-Appointed Desk or notebook reviews at the Pen Addict, or the whole Notebook Stories site.. If you’re in Toronto you could go to Take Note, Wonder Pens, Toronto Pen Shoppe or Laywine’s and you’d see products in many different sizes, bindings, and paper. Of all of them, for note pads, I like Rhodia. The Rhodia paper is great and works really well with fountain pens.
But for note books, here is my choice for first place, way above all others.
It’s the house brand Above Ground Premium Hardcover Sketchbook, 5.5″ × 8″ from Above Ground Art Supplies, which is just down McCaul from OCADU and the Art Gallery of Ontario. (It and Gwartzman’s are my two favourite art supply stores in Toronto.)
It’s hardcover and strongly bound; you can open it up and push it flat and nothing will break.
There are 80 sheets, making 160 pages. Each is 8″ (20.3 cm) high by 5.5″ (14 cm) wide; the book is a little bigger because of the cover overhang. It’s ¾″ (1.9 cm) thick.
The paper is acid free and weighs 128 gsm (grams per square metre). The sticker on it say “perfect for dry media and light washes,” which I’ve found true. It wrinkles if it gets too wet, but I’ve never had any trouble using a reasonable amount of water to do ink and wash drawings. If you’re doing serious watercolour work you’d want 300 gsm and proper watercolour paper. This is not for that. Get out your Arches block. For lighter water use, this paper works very well.
It has a bit of tooth, more than hot press paper (too smooth for me) but not like cold press (which I prefer). For a notebook and what I use it for, this paper is great.
The paper works very well with fountain pen ink, and I’m never particularly concerned with bleed-through. If I’m putting on a lot of ink (for emphasis, or putting a thick box around something), or doing a drawing and using ink and a water brush, it can show through slightly. I tested and a black Sharpie Ultra Fine bleeds through, but I don’t use them in these notebooks.
The paper is plain: no lines or dots.
The cover is sturdy. You can put this in a bag and knock it around, and you don’t need to worry. You can paste things onto the pages and it’ll get thicker but won’t complain.
When you’re done with it, you can write on the spine or put a label on it, then line it up on a shelf with others. They look good.
It costs $6.
I started using it after reading Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (see my October 2024 review). I write in it, I tape and glue things into it, I draw in it. I put stickers on the covers. I carry it with me everywhere and use it almost every day. When I’ve filled one up, I label the spine, put it on the shelf, and start a new one. I refer back to the old ones to check something or for inspiration or out of curiosity.
I recommend The Notebook. I recommend using a notebook. And for me, this is the best notebook. If you haven’t found one that works for you, look for something like this at an art supply store and try it out.