on saleGoulet Notebook w/ 68gsm Tomoe River Paper - A5, Dot Grid

like most pen junkies i'm very picky about my paper and this is great

Over years I developed a note taking habit of only writing notes on the right hand side of my notebooks - I used to have a different color notebook for each client - because of the bleed through or ghosting I got from the fountain pens and roller balls I used. I loved bold pens, and most notebook papers do not. Some rollerballs are the worst for this - my Montblanc LeGrand rollerball bled through worse than any fountain pen. I used the left side to scribble post-meeting notes thinking about my notes, usually in pencil. Years of habits, right left page rules.

But this Tomoe River paper at 68gsm... I got 52gsm and a 68gsm notebooks in a couple sizes, and tested. The results... well, I even brought some pens out of retirement to test, and NOTHING really bleeds through the 68gsm. A tad of ghosting with the wettest pens, but even that was minimal. The performance was enough to make me think about whether I should change the right page only note taking habit... but decided that what I'll change is that my post-meeting notes won't always have to be in pencil!

I tried the 52gsm paper notebooks and if I didn't have a serious thing for broad wet pens and fat rollerball lines, that would have been fine. Many of my more sedate line fountain pens, no ghosting on 52gsm, but my bold faves - Namiki Vanishing Point in bold, for example - just overwhelmed the 52gsm. On the 65gsm, fine. So, this here, this is the stuff!

I also really like the low page count in the Goulet notebooks. I always felt horribly guilty when I finished up with a client and 3/4 of the notebook was still blank. (The notebook per client was a way to keep my brains straight across a lot of clients, and some I worked with for 10 years or more.)

Now, if I could get four or five different color covers in the dot grid, I'd be in fat nib shimmer-ink and gushy rollerball heaven.

Overall, wonderful value for a quality, compact, thin little notebook. I wish there were a handful more pages, and that the cover came in one or two other neutral colors.

This journal is astoundingly light! The paper really does allow my fountain pen inks to shine, though I was initially turned off by the amount of shadowing I saw. I write on every page, front and back, and some of my inks are quite dark. I was impressed that I never saw any significant bleed through (the only time I saw it was when I was deeply coloring a section of a page with layers of marker- never on ordinary writing, despite juicy pens!)
The size and thickness of this journal took some getting used to, since I came from using an 8x8 book. I like the cover and how sturdy it is- I haven't had any tearing issues, and it has yet to fray on the edges, despite being toted around town on all the errands and being thrown around in the car, shopping cart, and house. I so desperately wish it were some other color than brown! It's nice enough, but if I wanted to decorate the cover, it's hard to coordinate with brown!
The paper is nice, if a bit thinner than I'm used to- though my pens glide across it like silk! Washi tape doesn't always peel off it nicely. I hesitate to try any of my Noodler's inks on this paper, since those always seem to bleed through every type of paper.
I would wish for just a few more pages to be able to fit the occasional 6-week month, or a few spare pages for mistakes, or for odd lists and such- I feel a little anxious using this for a whole month, because I have ZERO pages to spare- hope I don't mess up!

The paper is terrific for smoth writing, the binding allows it to lay mostly flat. Perfect size for my anorak pocket!

I was introduced to this product in a stationery sampler and now use it anywhere I can. Great paper / simple cover combination. Highly recommend!