I ran into my first Moleskine in a book shop in Hong Kong. I had never seen one before, but I have had many carnets de voyage. After a few pages the notebooks were often quickly lost or forgotten… to give way to another notebook of a different fashion… but I would never travel without one. A note book is always part of of what I call "city survival kit", along with a good book, a pen, a map of the city and a camera. But I never thought that a notebook could be something so nice and resistant as a Moleskine.
Moleskine’s marketing is just so smart. Evocating past writers and painters that won’t be able to contradict them, they simply explain that their products have been the companion of artists and adventurers for centuries. I’m not sure this is such an accurate statement, and the new makers of Moleskine are probably somewhat remixing history to their advantage… but the product remains great. My first Moleskine has been a travel companion for nearly a year, from XuJiaWai to Kashgar, from China to Germany. It’s (soon to come) successor is already waiting in my bookshelf for breaking into action. My Moleskine is always in my pocket and has become a companion of every day. I used to collect the million of thoughts (including blog entries) coming to my mind and disappearing soon after… I now catch them on my Moleskine, and re-use them later.
I’m not sure whether it’s the quality of the manufacturing or the beauty of the item, but its very existence is a tremendous help. With resistant leather binding, and good quality paper, this booklet can go through a lot without damage and has a superb advantage over all it’s electronic equivalents… it just takes any pen to work and its operating system never crashes.