Buy it from Amazon.
One shelf of my bookcases is filled with composition books, the detritus of decades of journalism. I’m not alone in using the once-traditional notebook of college students. These pseudo-marbled notebooks have been favored by Michel Basquiat and Eddie Vedder. Roy Lichtenstein immortalized them in a painting, Composition II.
I was reminded of these notebooks recently, because Tina Brown used them to record her Vanity Fair diaries. She’s recalled those scribbling sessions:
What was good about the Vanity Fair era was that I wrote so much. These days, the only place I really do my diary is on my laptop on a plane back from Davos or L.A. or London. But back in the pre-digital age, I had those black-and-white marbled composition notebooks and new New Yorker eyes (because I’d just arrived from London) and I was so wired with everything I was seeing that I had a desire to write it, share it, impart it… I’m at my most prolific when something new is happening and I’m on my own somewhere. There’s nothing like that caught-in-the-moment, onrushing immediacy of a diary. Where you don’t know where you’re headed: That’s the fun of it.
Tina Brown used the classic notebooks. Me too. You can get them cheaper, but those usually have flimsier covers. These last. [To buy Mead Composition College-Ruled Notebooks from Amazon, click here.]
For gifts and indulgences, consider an upgrade.
The “Mon carnet de croquis poche” notebook is divided, by Gaul, in three parts: journal pages in the front, graph craft paper in the middle, and divided perforated pages in the back. [To buy it from Amazon, click here.]
The luxury item in this category is the Vintage French Journal. Spiral bound. Very French. A dreamy gift for Francophiles, your most intimate confessions, and/or me. [To buy it from Amazon, click here.]
Previously published on The Head Butler.
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