wanted: mark’s flourishing days a5 notebook review

The sun has been up for about an hour or so, barely warming up the concrete. Some apartments are already painted in the moving, shifting shadows of trees; and some are still in shadow, the breeze early morning chill inside. There’s a dog that’s sitting in a balcony in a building right across the street. It’s a large, white dog, blending into the white paint of the balcony, and it’s only visible when it raises its head to look at the screaming seagulls. I feel a kinship to this dog. I, too, sit at a balcony, a little sleepy, and raise my head to look at the screaming seagulls.

There are two wolves in me. One of them likes slim, lightweight notebooks that are easy to throw in a bag and tote around. The other one likes gigantic tomes that are hardcovers or leather bound with more pages than I could use in a month. They fight every time I finish a journal, and I wait to see which one wins.

The summer brings a lot of traveling and writing in odd places, so I decided to go with a slimmer notebook. I usually travel with a small backpack or a cabin luggage at most, so every single gram of weight saved is a bonus. I ended up journaling very little over the past 5 months, so this notebook has been being toted around with actually very little writing done in it. Last week, I finally managed to finish it, and thought to myself, this notebook deserves a little review because I could not find any information about it when I was buying it.

I had ordered it from penstore.nl, which is an online shop that has a decently sized offering. I think I was getting the 2024 Hobonichi and it was just under the free shipping rate. I can always use notebooks, especially if they’re fountain pen friendly, so I decided to get one that was on the cheaper end. While I was doing research on it, I couldn’t find anything except the penstore’s offering, not even on the webpage of Mark’s. I can see that even those are taken down now, maybe it was a one-off limited edition.

You can imagine, I was pretty curious and wanted to use this notebook, as it has a really pretty cover with daisies printed on it. To be fair, I don’t think they’re meant to be daisies, but I like to imagine that they are because daisies are my favourite flower.

Anyway, I got it and promptly left it until my journal finished. Around last April, I opened up the package and got the nice little notebook out. It has textured cardboard covers that are completely printed with the design. Interestingly the non-printed side of the paper has a different feel in hand than the printed side, even though the hatch texture looks the same. What really impressed me was the gold gilding. I sometimes put this notebook into Galen’s Writer’s Bank Bag, but mostly it was just on its own, thrown into a bag. The corners did lose their sharpness, and some paint rub off along the spine. The notebook held up pretty well, not even the gilding wore off despite the summer heat. Great durability!

The paper itself is good. It doesn’t have feathering up to medium-wet pens, I don’t own any super wet broad nibs anyway. It holds up well up to a wet medium architect and TWSBI’s 1.1 stubs, that’s the most I use anyway. It’s 80gsm acid-free paper, and comes with a light olive coloured ruling. I like that the ruling absorbs the ink as well, so it disappears into the writing instead of sticking out. There are dots of bleed through where the nib rests on the paper for too long or two wet lines overline. It’s on the smoother side with a hint of feedback that has a really pleasant feel. It gives a bit more tooth to smoother nibs, and doesn’t hinder the pencil-like feedback Sailor nibs have. The colours show up good, and the shimmer is quite visible when it catches the light. I didn’t have any sheen showing, though I’m not sure if it’s because of the paper or simply that I didn’t use super sheening inks.

One big complaint I have about this notebook is that it doesn’t lay flat. It’s especially bad in the beginning and in the end, where the pages want to curl up instead of bend and it’s almost impossible to write closer to the binding. With a 40 sheet (80 pages) notebook, that’s not a lot of comfortable writing surface. I ended up using some marble pieces I found on a beach as paperweight…

Overall, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this notebook, but the laying flat is an issue that will keep me from buying this notebook again. I had loved the design and the paper was comfortable to write on, so it’s a shame that the binding failed a good notebook.

Thank you for reading!

Disclaimer: This post contains my personal thoughts and opinions. It is not sponsored by any third party.