on saleClairefontaine Basic Clothbound A4 Notebook - Green, Lined

Great Notebook love Clairefontaine paper

The green is deeper (and more to my liking) than the picture shows. The pages are excellent and it lays quite flat making writing in it very easy. I fill these notebooks up with my morning pages and use a variety of fountain pens. No downsides that I'm able to identify.

Paper quality is fantastic. Thick, smooth, no bleeding, ghosting, or feathering. But... The paper cover feels cheap. The elastic band twists and tangles, while the metal ends holding the elastic create large lumps you have to write over. I ended up pulling the elastic out of the back holes because it was so annoying. Binding was stiff and the glue made the first quarter of the notebook difficult to use, as it wouldn't lay flat. I finally got so irritated that I basically abused the spine and bent every single spread all the way backwards probably 50 times. It FINALLY started to stay open, but it took a lot of time to get it that way. To be fair, the glue of the spine held up and no pages fell out. I liked the slightly larger ruling and rounded page edges. Overall though, I just couldn't get past the flaws just for the sake of the paper quality. I spend a decent amount on pens and ink, and I like a prettier notebook with fewer problems. It's a miss for me! I'll stick to the Quo Vadis or to other Clairefontaine options!

Goulet always delivers in terms of product and service. Clairefontaine paper is great as is this particular Notebook.

So much I love about this, most especially that satiny Clairefontaine paper. What I discovered I do not like at all is the glued spine. This notebook is incapable of lying open in a position that makes writing comfortable. The deeper you get into it, the higher the hump on the left-side page becomes, the more challenging being able to write grows until you can blessedly move to the right-hand page. I've tried pressing and stretching the binding to get it to lie flatter to no avail. As a result, my penmanship suffers and journaling becomes an exercise in annoyance. I now regret having bought two of these.