I usually go for the hard cover, 13 centimeters by 21 centimeters “notebook” in whatever colour or special edition that catches my fancy. While there are smaller journals available, I find that this size fits well in most of my purses and is easy to carry around during meetings. They also allow me to cram most of the information in a 2-hour meeting on two facing pages, which makes referring back to my notes a lot easier.

The paper is very smooth—most pens and pencils I have used on Moleskine notebooks glide smoothly on the paper’s surface, which means less wrist and finger pain after spending a long time writing. Sharpies, even the extra fine point ones, tend to bleed through, but normal pens (ball point, ink, or felt tip) don’t. The paper also works well with washi tape—while some people pre-divide theirs, I use my notebooks one page at a time, then line each page with a different colored washi tape to make specific themes/topics stand out. For example, as part of the regional community building process I am a part of at the moment, there are three major things in my service notebook: studying what community building is, notes from meetings with my other team members, and my to-do list. I choose to washi tape in blue all pages on which I jot down my to-do list, making it a lot easier to flip open to that page when in the middle of the action.

I prefer the hard cover version as they make for a much more comfortable writing experience pretty much anywhere, something that is important to me—I pretty much whip open my journal anywhere and everywhere. When opened on a hard surface, it opens easily at a 180-degree angle without any strain on the spine and any paper tears.

The elastic closure is really practical and long-lasting—I can stuff my journal with random bit of paper that will not fly away without the elastic stretching. It does become a little loose after 5-6 months, but it still remains usable. The ribbon bookmark is really practical for obvious reasons. It does tend to fray at the bottom but not so much; also, a regularly applied dab of clear nail polish takes care of that problem easily.

On top of its regular line of hard cover ruled notebooks, Moleskine regularly releases special editions journal collections, including Alice in Wonderland, the Audio Cassette, Lego, Coca-Cola, Le Petit Prince, The Simpsons, Minnie Mouse, Peanuts, Hello Kitty, Batman, and the seemingly ever-expanding Star Wars collection. All the ones I have purchased come with stickers, which makes the child in me quie happy. I’m currently intrigued by the new Blend collection, which seems to be journals that come with a fabric-based cover.

Recommend?

As you can tell, I love Moleskine, but enough questions have been raised during the writing of this post that I can only recommend them temporarily, until the second part of this review at least when I try to find the answers to the questions in this post.

For more: http://www.saharsblog.com/review/product-review-review/product-review-moleskine-hard-cover-ruled-large-notebooks-part-1-2/