(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)
This lovely Voyageur notebook from Mr. Rouge was handmade with pride in Mexico. It has a soft, textured leather cover with no branding, which combines a minimal look with the rustic elegance of natural materials. It looks like the kind of book you'd find on the shelves of a secret castle library, which fits the brand philosophy--that this is the notebook for travelers, writers, and dreamers. I fancy myself all those things, so it's no wonder I like this notebook.
The leather cover is glued to a thicker endpaper, and then 180 sheets of dot-grid paper are sewn into the binding, a hearty serving of pages for those with lots to write. The notebook lays open flat even without any training. At the end of the notebook, there's a page for your personal information, and a glued-in paper folder.
The book feels great in the hand. It makes you want to write, which is, in my opinion, the best quality a notebook can have. I take big notebooks like this as a personal challenge, and I want to fill them with words.
The leather cover retains a lot of its natural texture, with the rough, unfinished side along the inside edge. It has that good leather smell, too.
The downside of this notebook will be, for some, the paper. It has a nice crispness and feels good to write on, but it doesn't handle fountain pens very well. A fine nib with a light ink does okay, but anything wetter tends to bleed through. A spot where I accidentally dripped ink bled through four pages. Pencil felt amazing on the crisp paper, and ballpoint and gel pens worked very well. This notebook seems to crave a wood-case pencil, though. It's the perfect paper for it, and the smell of the leather with the woodsy smell of the pencil made me feel like I was cosplaying as some romantic poet writing her heart out deep in the forest. I dig it.
Mr. Rouge offers a variety of notebooks, which are available in the US via Amarillo Stationery. The Voyageur is available blank, lined, or dot-grid and in black, light brown, or dark brown, and sells for $26. That's a fantastic price for such a large, well-made notebook. It may not be the top choice for those who exclusively use fountain pens, but for the times I want to write with my beloved gel pens and pencils, this is the perfect notebook.
(This notebook was purchased from Amarillo Stationery at retail price for the purposes of this review.)
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