A5 Lined Journal Notebook – 365 Page Leather Journals for Writing Women & Men，Hardcover Notebook with 100Gsm Thick Pages，Daily Diary for Travel, Work，School，Note Taking，College Ruled (5.9″ x 8.5″)

I didn’t hold out much hope for a product made in China as I have been sorely disappointed time & again over misleading descriptions, quality of product, actual page count (I don’t even want to go there), etc. I am a journaling freak, been keeping a journal for almost 58 years. Always have a pen & notebook close by. Always on the hunt for the “perfect” notebook, & they are few & far between these days (usually it’s page count & paper quality that’s the biggest hang up for me: thin, cheesy notebook paper, forget it; glued binding, forget that, too). Can’t find anything with 110 gsm paper: a dream to write on with fountain pens. Anyway, nowadays everything is made overseas & it has adversely affected (big time) the quality of everything I look for in a journal. Old standbys I used 40 years ago are no longer made in the US, not the same quality, & prices are ridiculously high. That is, until I stumbled upon Percun, I thought, “Oh well, they aren’t that expensive, might as well cross my fingers & try a couple of them out.” I ordered 2 green ones in the A4 size. It was a big crapshoot; buy the ticket, take the ride. When the two notebooks came in, I was stunned! And in a very good way. Somehow Amazon managed to ship them without destroying them in the process. I guess I got lucky. They usually throw product into an oversized box, no packing material whatsoever to protect it from the throes of poor terrain, turbulent air, rogue wave high seas shipping (& sometimes a combination of 1 or more of the above if the package changes shippers enroute), which means you get a product with crushed &/or bent corners, broken spines or separated (read torn) covers from the book content & other sad horrors of ill-treatment–unfortunately, it happens way too many times). Amazingly, the notebooks were in a box almost the right size for them, & although they were loose inside with just a thin cellophane wrapping, they were not damaged at all! Shock & awe! Anyway, I like a BIG notebook, with plenty of space to “think with my hands.” A4 is a little bigger than US standard 8.5 X 11, & it’s heavy! But I have found I like it like that, means it’s substantial, a force to be reckoned with, to be tamed, take my thoughts & dreams, my life, & keep them safe! The pages are sewn in (only time will tell if it was well done) and it opens flat. Yes, it is made in China (strike one); they falsely ascribe a ‘college ruling’ (strike two), but I was taking a chance because if the pictures actually showed an A4 (which I didn’t believe was true either) I counted the number of lines to a page: 24. If it was actual college ruling, there should be at least 35 lines. Therefore, the main header description was flat wrong. Turns out, the spacing in this notebook is actually 8 mm & is perfect! College ruling is 7mm or less (get your introductory descriptions correct, vendors, this info is important!). 8mm is plenty of space to be able to read what you write and enjoy the process. It was also claimed it was 365 pages (this is a pet peeve of mine, a lot of foreign countries will claim a certain page count, but you get the product & they gyp you out of several sheets, which makes me want to wring someone’s neck). I counted the sheets twice in both notebooks; lo & behold there were 365 pages for real! Beware though, the pages are NOT numbered (can’t have everything, I guess). Paper is 100 gsm which seems to be considered the new standard for “heavy paper.” But it is way better than notebook paper which wasn’t designed to last 1,000 years let alone 100. Nice cream color, wide lines, smooth paper, but not ideal for heavier nibbed fountain pens (i.e. medium point or larger), gel pens are too greasy, & a 0.7mm steel nib ballpoint will score the paper & make it curl (been there, done that, annoying). The top of every page has boxes for weather & the days of the week, lines for Memo No. & a date. End papers are much heavier than the lined sheets, a must. The first page after the front endpaper is reserved for Personal Data (your name & contact info) which is in the lower 1/3rd of the page. The upper right quarter has a nice drawing of an open blank book & a quill pen, a rather nice touch. The cover: & this can also be a deal breaker: if the description states ‘hard cover’, it better be just that — HARD, NO FLEX at all, period. This is notebook gets a very good grade for a hard bound: you can sit with it in your lap and not have it flopping all over the place. The cover feels like suede, a very nice feel. A nice embossed stylized tree with the sun peeking out is nicely done. But the thing is, it is NOT REAL leather. If it was, you’d be paying at least triple for it & it would smell like leather. If you see words like “polyurethane”, or “PU” (polyurethane abbreviated), in any description on any product, it is not real leather. I would suggest you educate yourself & look this up on the internet, you’ll be shocked about what you read. But it is used a lot on a great many different products. And it doesn’t last as long as you’d like it to. In some states or countries, the stuff is banned for reasons you can read about for yourself! Now I don’t know exactly what this is on the cover, but it’s not leather. Although it does have a nice feel & it looks well made. Extra little amenities: you get three narrow, satin ribbon markers (the green came with green, brown, black); a small packet of sticky markers; a large pocket in the back (for extra notes or calendar sheets or secret phone numbers); two narrow elastic bands that wrap vertically around the book to keep it closed when not in use; & an elastic loop sewn into the edge of the back cover for your writing instrument. OVERALL: I am happily surprised with this notebook. I like it a lot, & I’m extremely picky when it comes to my writing materials. In fact, I like these two so much, I just ordered two more, in brown. I hope Percun sticks around for a long while because I’d like to order more of these, 2 at a time in several other colors. Thank you Percun for a really nice product!