Size Well B
At the end of last week's post, Scrib tossed down a gauntlet and said, "Maybe we'd better let Amanda tell you about Size Well B..."
Okay then!
Much as A4 and A5 are great, and I have a pretty large stash of both sizes, I do have an enduring love of B5 and B6 (not B4... that would just be too big. Don't be daft.).
For those of you that aren't familiar with the B-size range, they follow the same principle that B5 is twice the size of B6 etc, and that the ratio of the two sides is the same as in the A-size range. They lie roughly between the A sizes, so B6 lies roughly between A6 and A5, and B5 lies roughly between A5 and A4.
A4: 210mm x 297mm (8.3 x 11.7")
B5: 176mm x 250mm (6.9 x 9.8")
A5: 148mm x 210mm (5.8 x 8.3")
B6: 125mm x 176mm (4.9 x 6.9")
Why do I like them so much? Well, because A4 is a bit too big (opened out, an A4 notebook is, of course, A3 on a desk), A5 is okay, A6 is too small. B6, on the other hand, is a brilliant size, and B5 is possibly my favourite size of all.
That's all well and good, but how easy are they to come by?
Well, Nero stocks a number of B6 and B5 notebooks. You just need to know where to look.
Let me help you with that!
B6
Leuchtturm do one that's near enough B6 at 125 x 190mm. At time of writing, Nero has three in yellow left, and three in orange, so hurry up if you want one of them.
Midori do a three-pack of 48-page notebooks with plain paper, grid, or lined. Again, they are not true B6 at 175 x 105mm, but they're pretty close.
If you are super-quick, you might manage to get the last Stalogy B6 half-year notebook. This is a brilliant little notebook, with 192 pages of paper with a very faint grey 5mm grid. It's sort of designed as a planner, but with such minimal fuss that it's just as easy to use it as a notebook. It too isn't exactly B6 at 182 x 128mm, but what's a few mm between friends?
B5
My favourites! These are the absolute Goldilocks size for me... enough real-estate to get ideas down; not so big they fill your entire desk. And yes... I ground Stu down and Nero now stocks them! Hurrah!
They are all by Stalogy, and again, are a few mm off B5 at 179 x 252mm. They're lined, with 34 pages per book, with black, blue, or grey card covers. You may have seen one of them in my converted Deskfax (anyone remember them? They work on B5 size... I removed the rings from one I picked up for cheap, and converted it to a Traveler's Notebook style cover):
I use them mostly as writing notebooks, and have one for setting, one for characters, one for plot, and then (usually) a much larger one for scene-planning. Yes, all of them together might be considered 'behemoth' but individually, they are small and perfectly sized.
So, there you have it... a quick gallop through some B5 and B6 notebooks. Give them a whirl. They might be exactly the size(s) you've always been looking for (even if you didn't realise).
