Epica Leather Journal: https://epica.com/products/classic-handmade-leather-journal-refillable
Galen Leather Tomoe River: https://www.galenleather.com/collections/leather-notebooks
Hello, everyone, I really hope you’re doing well so today, I’m gonna show you my top five notebooks / journals. One of my subscribers asked me to make this video and, to be honest, it was extremely hard to choose five notebooks that I love the most because, if you’ve been following my channel for a while, I have hundreds of notebooks and a lot of them are really incredible and amazing and I really enjoy using them, but I did narrow down the five and these are the five ones I love the most.
Some of them I’ve known or used for years. Some have come into my life more recently and I’ve only used them more recently, like the Galen leather here, but these are my top five for now – that might change in a month or in a year, but that’s it for now.
All right. so let’s get started! First of all, my favorite all-arounder is probably the Leuchtturm 1917. I’ve been using this brand for a really long time, at least over a decade, if not longer, and I really enjoy the paper quality and build. These notebooks hold up really well – really nicely made, and i believe they use 80 gsm paper and I love the color. It is ivory colored paper versus really bright off-white.
I prefer more cream colored paper over super white paper. For me, that’s easier on the eye and it has really said nice paper quality. It is found pen friendly. It is not the best paper that’s available, but it is pretty good in my opinion, and you can use fountain pens. I know some people that use fountain pens that use broader nips or wetter inks complain a little bit about too much ghosting and a little bit of bleed-through.
But for finer nibs, It works really well and it’s definitely better paper quality than Moleskine, in my opinion. So this is probably, as I said, my favorite all-around notebook.
This is the caramel color. Unfortunately, they don’t make this color anymore, but they have lot of different other colors and I’m going to link all the notebooks down below and I have done in-depth reviews on all of these notebooks. So if you want to know more about them, if you want to see writing samples, please feel free to browse for my channel and find those videos all right.
So the next one I’d say is the Quo Vadis Habana, and this journal uses Clairefontaine paper, and if you’re a fountain pen user, you probably know Clairefontaine paper.
It is an extremely great paper. It is super sleek super smooth. I said it’s also ivory colored off-white paper. I use this for my morning pages and i really enjoyed using it because with your morning pages you get into this just creative flow of like just letting your subconscious come out onto the page, and with super smooth paper, You’ve got a great writing experience!
Everything just starts flowing and that’s the most important part for me too, with using a journal, how smooth and enjoyable the writing experience is. I don’t like paper that has a lot of feedback. I guess it could be called scratchiness. Some people like that when they have to work a little harder for the writing. I just want a smooth flow because for me the enjoyment of writing is just when everything just starts moving and starts flowing and a good notebook should help you with that.
And i also like the size as you can see, it’s slightly bigger than an a5, so it gives you a little bit more room on the page without being too big so that you can’t carry it with you anymore. So a really nice notebook. As I said, this is the Quo Vadis Habana and again, as I said, I will link all of them below.
Then the next one is the Epica leather journal. This is extremely gorgeous notebook. In my opinion, it has this medieval look to it and when i feel a little bit more fancy, i like using this notebook – and it is refillable.
So once you have this cover, you can refill this over and over and over again, and it has also off-white paper. This is a lined one. They also have blank pages and dot grid available, and also I like using a fountain pen with this paper because it has said really great paper quality as well, and I just love the luxurious feel of this notebook. As i said, you can tell that it is really high-quality product and, as I said it’s handmade in Italy. It’s really beautiful, yeah, so that was the epic leather journal.
And the next one is, let’s say, the Galen leather. This is a Tomoe River notebook! Again, if you use fountain pens, you’ve probably heard of Tomoe River. It is really thin paper. It’s super flimsy. What I love about this paper is it gives you that crinkle factor when you write and I’m actually using this as my daily journal at the moment and I started January 1st new year’s and then I’m actually like halfway through the 400 pages here so. And I like the size as well.
This is super portable compared to a standard a5. This is a b6. So, as you can see, it is slightly smaller than a standard a5, but it still gives you enough riding space while being a little bit more compact – and this is my favorite Tomoe River paper notebook because of the cover. It’s this is dark, green leather. It’s super smooth and beautiful, and it looks really nice and it’s the softcover and it holds up really well.
I use this every day, yet nothing’s happened to the binding, and it’s still really tight and it’s just glued here, but still, nothing’s coming undone. So really really great quality, notebook, absolutely beautiful in my opinion.
And then last but not least, I love this little pocket Moleskine, and i know that most Moleskine doesn’t have the greatest paper quality, but I still like the way this feels in your hand,. It has really soft feel to it.
Again, It is ivory colored. All of these notebooks are ivory colored, except for the Galen leather, which is plain white, and I would prefer if it was again off-white. But this journal maker only uses white Tomoe River paper for his notebooks and not off-white, so I can see the difference here, but still a really great notebook.
Why I love this Moleskine. I’ve looked high and low for a pocket notebook that could replace this with a little better paper quality, because Moleskine paper bleeds through a lot. The only safe thing to use in this is really just a ballpoint pen. Everything else you might get a lot of ghosting and also bleed through, but i just love the format!
I love how nice this fits in my hand and how compact it is. I’ve tried, Moleskine A6s and it’s just a little bit too tall for my taste. I tried the passport size, travelers notebook. I just can’t stand that it always just flaps back shut like it doesn’t lie open! It just always just closes up on itself.
It just drove me crazy, so I couldn’t use that either. And i’ve been looking for alternatives and some notebooks are too thick. Then the other ones, like field, notes they’re just too flimsy for my taste. So i always come back to the pocket size Moleskine.
I’ve also probably been using this for almost 20 years now. It’s a really long time.
So yeah. These are my top five notebooks. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave me a comment. Also, please, let me know what your favorite notebook or notebooks are. I know there are so many amazing notebooks out there.
As I said, it was really hard for me to choose these five notebooks out of all the other ones. I have yeah, but that’s it for now. If you’ve enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you want to see more videos on journals and notebooks, please feel free to subscribe to my channel and thank you so much for watching!
Epica Leather Journal: https://epica.com/products/classic-handmade-leather-journal-refillable
Galen Leather Tomoe River: https://www.galenleather.com/collections/leather-notebooks
