Wild about Wilder.

My turn to tell you how I feel about the A5 notebook from Wilder. TL;DR - it's lovely.

I have a lined version, with a blue cover, although it's the orange dot-grid version that's currently available on the site. I'm sure the other versions will be arriving soon though.

The notebook ticks a lot of boxes for me, not least the lack of plastic! Over the last few years I've been getting less and less keen on buying anything that isn't reusable, recyclable, or biodegradable. I loathe the shrink-wrapping plastic that comes with so many things, so to be able to buy a beautiful notebook that has no plastic in its construction or packaging is a definite win for me. For those also concerned about such things, the ink is vegan.

Each notebook has 96 pages of 80 gsm ink-friendly paper. The line spacing is 7 mm, with a top margin of 14 mm and a bottom one of 6 mm. The corners are rounded and the cover is a heavy card (270 gsm) with the name embossed on the front. The paper is FSC accredited and the whole notebook is recyclable.

Okay, so those are the specs, but what's it like to use?

Well, as Eddy noted, the book isn't one you could use a Sharpie in, nor will it lie very flat (though a bit of brute strength does help in that department... You can force it to lie more open but then it's less keen on closing. You win some, you lose some).

I tried some fountain pens in it. With my very wet nib/ink combo (Rosetta Mosaic 1.1 mm stub nib and Diamine Twilight) dry time might be a problem for those lefties who tend to smudge. That made me wonder if there would be some show-through to the other side, but there wasn't, which makes me very happy. All other pens have been great too.

The card stock is robust enough to lob this little wonder in a bag and not worry whether it will survive and the rounded corners make it more scuff-proof.

All in all, I really like this notebook. It's simple and classy enough to use in work settings, the number of pages hits a sweet spot for me - not too many, not too few, the whole lack of plastic makes my heart sing, and the paper quality is top-notch.