The Rhodia Webnotebook’s a genuine French notebook with French made paper — yeah the two together are not a given. You can have a non-French made notebook that nonetheless has French paper; for example, the Quo Vadis Habana is an American made notebook using the same paper found in the Rhodia Webnotebook. Anyway, enough about provenance. Now, for the review.
The Rhodia Webnotebook is a great notebook, following the same basic design as the more popular Moleskine notebook. It has an elastic band and an inside pocket. A comparison to the Moleskine is inevitable, and I like both, but the Rhodia is a more quality product and more expensive. For that you get:
- excellent paper in a pleasing ivory tone
- thick, luxuriant leatherette cover
- great sturdy construction
- narrow grey lines for comfortable eyeing while you write
Costly paper is not a requirement to writing; masterpieces have been written on cheap legal pads and worse, but a notebook can be an inducement to writing. In my own experience, a blank notebook is a challenge to be met by emptying out the ideas in my head into it. A page of densely packed sentences is a work of art in and of itself. A blank page is a reproach.
The work in progress:
The reward — a brand new notebook:
Perfect Pencil 