I've been a fan of the Moleskine notebook for a while now. Used in days gone past by the likes of Hemingway and Picasso, they are described as "notebooks covered in hard-wearing oilcloth-covered cardboard (Moleskine)". I am not convinced about the hard-wearing bit.
I use a large lined notebook. It is about A5 sized, and has 240 pages all ready for note taking goodness. However, I have never made it to the end of a notebook without the cover cracking or splitting in some way. My latest notebook didn't even last until the middle, as you can see in the first picture below where the black elastic marks my "current page". The second picture is a close-up of the split along the edge of the spine, and the third is a larger image showing where I crudely patched up the initial cracking with tape.
Yesterday, I finally had to buy a roll of gaffa tape and replace the shoddy tape with a decent "top to bottom" taped up spine. It has given the notebook back a spine, but boy does it look ugly!
When I see other people's notebooks, they always look pristine. Is it just me? Am I particularly hard on my Moleskines? I don't feel like I am; I'm not deliberately mistreating them in cruel ways. I bet Hemingway and Picasso didn't have to gaffa tape THEIR notebooks!
Oh well. The paper is still great quality and the notebooks sit nice and flat when you open them due to the way they are stitched, so I guess I'll just have to make do with my custom repair work to keep the outsides as good as the insides.
