The shape of things to come

Regular readers will have spotted that Amanda is very keen on B5 and others... well, not so much. But Nero keeps finding reasons to insist that B5 notebooks can and should be tried by everyone and, OK, maybe he has a point. Maybe. Shucks.

For those of us making copious notes on the move A5 takes some beating - but of course that is not all of us. Extensive testing of the many exciting notebooks grudgingly accepted by one particular ingrate curmudgeon have proved that, hands up, Amanda is right; for creative writing it's just the ticket.

Sometimes, after all, the notebook is unlikely to be carried around much at all; it's staying in the home office, authorial study or artist's garret. So one could even go 'full fat' foolscap, but A4 is so large that it just screams formality; it's what was in the stationery cupboard at the last proper office you worked in, after all, and that's not where you penned that slim volume of verse, now, is it? When A5 is smaller than it needs to be, A4 is too big for its boots but a rectangular format still works fine, B5 turns out to live in the Cinderella sweet spot.

Perhaps because it's a bit of a niche offering, some of the best B5 notebooks sell out rather quickly. When the Stalogy notebook is back in stock, for instance, you'd be well-advised to get your skates on quickly; it's got cracking Japanese paper and it's a bargain. But at the time of writing there are still stocks of the Leuchtturm B5 notebook and better still, the tartan-covered Rhodia Heritage, which has what this particular nib-wielder considers about the best fountain-pen friendly paper Europe has produced. Go get 'em - and be expansive.