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Hi Everyone, My problem is that I prefer hardcover journals for daily writing, but move around a lot so they are too heavy and impractical for my kind of lifestyle. Therefore, I'm thinking about switching to something more portable like Midori A5 journals. The issue is that I don't like writing on floppy surfaces and often need the hardcover to act as a writing surface when I'm out and about. Does such a thing exist as a leather notebook cover that is stiff enough or has hard enough surfaces to make a softcover journal feel like a hardback? Thanks for any suggestions!

For the last few years I have been using Ryman Softcover (medium) notebooks for journalling. They come in soft-touch hardback covers in a range of colours, and feature elastic closures, a page marker, a folding pouch at the back, and 192-pages of cream/off-white paper with ruled lines 7mm apart. Their paper is not coated & smooth like Rhodia/Oxford Optik, so is slightly absorbent, but is still reasonably resistant to show-through and feathering, and has not suffered from bleed-through (at least not with my pens, which are all ‘Medium’- or ‘Fine’-nibbed). i.e. my experience of these notebooks is that they are cheap Moleskine clones, and with the bonus that the paper in them is fine for use with fountain pens To clarify, the paper in the ones that I have bought to-date has been fine for use with my fountain pens... All of the Ryman journals that I have bought have had 80gsm paper in them. The last time I nipped in to my local Ryman to buy a new notebook for journalling, I noticed that their paper had been changed to 70gsm paper. I didn't like the sound of that, and so got the staff to look in the stock room to see if they still had any that had the 80gsm paper. I ended up buying the shop's last two notebooks with 80gsm paper. Not in covers of the colour I wanted, but I can live with that as long as the paper is satisfactory. Why am I posting this? Because I am now running out of space in my last remaining notebook, and will need to buy a new one soon. So: I would like to know whether any FPN-ers have used the newer versions of these notebooks with the 70gsm paper. If you have, please will you tell me whether the thinner paper can still cope with fountain pen inks? Or is there now a horrible amount of show-/bleed-through? If your experience is that the 70gsm bleeds through, then I would like to ask you for recommendations for notebooks with paper that does not suffer from ink bleed-through. Preferably with lines that are 7mm (or 8mm) apart. I have previously considered the Rhodia Webnotebook, because I love how the white paper in their No.13 pads handles FP inks. But there is one snag for me - I noticed that the lined version of the ‘webbie’ has lines that are only 5mm apart. I use my journals for Cathartic Ranting, so my handwriting in them is often very messy and quite large. My experience with 5mm separation (in a Leuchtturm 1917 dot grid) is that the amount of space between the marks is not large enough for my Ranty handwriting I have also found the paper in the two Leuchtturm notebooks that I have (one dotted, one lined) to be less FP-friendly than the 80gsm Ryman notebook paper. I found its coating/finish to be too glossy/slippery for FP ink. Admittedly, that was a couple of years ago. Has the paper in the Leuchtturms become more FP-friendly since then? I would appreciate, dear Reader, any advice that you can offer me. Cheers, M.