Moleskine Wonder Woman Blue Notebook Review

It’s the Moleskine of Truth! No, it’s actually just the Moleskine Wonder Woman Blue limited edition notebook. This is a brand new edition for Spring 2019, and there’s a red one too (expect a review later on).

The notebook with the wrapper on makes you think that there will be a red element on the cover, but the print on it is only in black and yellow on the blue background.

There’s a quote on the back of the notebook (there’s a different one on the red notebook), and it’s lovely. Go, Diana!

Now we come to the biggest issue I had with this notebook: it has some printing quality control issues. If you look closely you can see that on the yellow lasso print there are tiny bits of paper stuck to the cover. It feels as if there was a sticker there and someone removed it with bits left behind. They aren’t sticky and they are very easily removed with a wet wipe, but that’s not something I enjoy dealing with when unwrapping a brand new notebook. It’s only on the yellow parts of the print, so it is probably a leftover of the printing process, but it shouldn’t have slipped through.

The front cover unwrapped:

I understand the design aesthetic here, but I don’t agree with it. It would have been nicer if it was black, yellow and red and it would have been even nicer if Diana (Wonder Woman) was in full colour. As it is, the lasso is more attention grabbing and vivid than she is, and it’s not the main point. This isn’t the “Lasso of Truth” limited edition notebook, is it?

Here’s the unwrapped back cover, which is a little plain compared to what Moleskine have done for Batman in past limited editions.

The front end paper plays with the lasso of truth design element, and again, I really wish that Diana was more represented in this edition. Maybe her doing her thing, or even a comic book page. She deserves the same excellent design that Moleskine made for Batman and Star Wars.

This is better! The back end page is where it is. You see Wonder woman using her lasso which… is mysteriously cut out mid back-pocket. What? Why? If only they hadn’t done that, or at least if it would have vanished into the pocket. It just looks weird here. I get that it disappears into the page so that it looks like she’s shutting the notebook’s cover, very clever and comic book-like, but take a step back and just look at the page layout. It’s… not good.

Inside are lined pages and a blue ribbon. The paper is the newer kind, so there’s no weird spidering, it’s good for gel ink pens, ballpoint, pencil, and certain fountain pens and inks (Noodler’s Black works with every fountain pen, all else needs testing, but generally speaking fine and extra fine nibs and inks that aren’t overly saturated or wet will work fine. The paper is thin, so there will be show through).

This edition comes with some nice stickers, and it would have been great if they would have been part of the cover or end paper design, but I’m not complaining, you’re complaining!

The best thing about this edition is the B-side of the wrapper, which explains what Wonder Woman’s stuff does. Of course the Lasso of Truth is there, it’s the Lasso of Truth edition, didn’t we already go over that?

The Wonder Woman fan in your life is probably going to love this edition, even though Moleksine can and does do better. It’s fun, it’s unusually colourful (most Moleskine limited editions feature black covers. They’re like Ford that way), and it will probably be on deeply discounted sale soon, so stock up then for gifting or as an everyday notebook.

Tournament of Books: Census

A few days ago I finished reading the tenth Tournament of Books 2019 book, Jesse Ball’s “Census“, which is running against Lydia Kiesling’s “The Golden State” in the fourth round of the competition.

Perhaps unfairly, but when I first saw “Census” I thought that it was going to be novel in the vein of Max Porter’s “Grief is a Thing With Feathers”. I blame the the cormorant on its cover and the published blurb about it for putting me in that frame of mind. It was very clear a few pages in that “Census” would not survive that comparison. Then again, so few books could.

“Census” is book with a very moving preface and some very moving photos at the end. In the middle is a featureless wasteland. It is populated by unnamed characters that function in an unnamed, ill defined world that is maybe desolate, where a peculiar census is conducted each year in which people are asked questions by a census taker who then marks them and posts their answers onwards. Nothing in this novel is given edges, well defined. Everything is wishy washy, vague, seen through thick, milky glass. But that preface… so you stick to it, and it helps that the book is short, though it has no plot to speak of and the setting is bleak and bland. The key to this novel is its characters then, and that’s not surprising because after all, you’ve read the preface and that’s what’s keeping you here.

And that’s the biggest frustration, because when Jesse Ball lets himself write good characters then by God the man knows how to write good characters. There’s a tiny vignette of a ex-fossil loving boy that’s so precise, so concise and so convincing that you want to howl that the rest of the novel isn’t like that. That the surgeon-father-protagonist isn’t like that. That the son, the whole reason for this novel, remains a shapeless mass with nothing making him hum – no distinct feature, tic, preference. That the wife is the best defined major character and even she is seen through thick fog. It’s never personal, emotional, realistic or if he’s really going for the absurdist (which is a poor stylistic choice for the subject matter IMHO) then it’s far from fully embracing that even.

What is feels like is that the writer took a subject that was too close to home, too painful, and tried to deal with it while not dealing with it at the same time. The result is a novel that does everything possible to make it difficult for you to feel anything for any of its characters, including empathy. It very easily lets you slip into the “oh this has nothing to do with me” mode, and from there to “none of these characters are likable, hate-able or even interesting, so why should I care” mode.

But then, the preface…

Vintage Faber Castell Sharpener

I found this beast in a dusty corner of my favourite vintage shop in Jaffa. It’s far from pristine, but it’s so overbuilt that it still works. The body is Bakelite and somehow still whole, and even the green shavings receptacle isn’t cracked. I haven’t been able to find anything about the Faber Castell 52/18 (except for an eBay listing that says that it’s rare), but I love the design enough to wish that they were still being made today. Something about that green cutout in the black body just works.

This Week’s Long Run: Evening Birds

Saturday was supposed to rain cats and dogs, so I pushed my Saturday morning 10K to a Friday evening one.

This is a terrible picture of a heron, but that’s what I have I’m afraid.

Momma Egyptian goose keeps an eye on her swimming little ones. Not pictured, the rat that was foraging for food a few meters from them.

Sea scouts out in their boats:

A pair of Egyptian geese watching over the river:

It was very windy, so the surfers were out in force:

Tournament of Books: The Dictionary of Animal Languages

Yesterday I finished reading the ninth Tournament of Books 2019 book, Heidi Sopinka’s “The Dictionary of Animal Languages“, which is running against Esi Edugyan’s “Washington Black” in the third round of the competition.

“The Dictionary of Animal Languages” is a technically difficult novel to read: the language is dense, the plot isn’t linear and at least at first it takes time to figure out who is talking, what’s going on, and in which timeline (one of the several past ones, or the present) you are. It doesn’t help that dialog isn’t delineated with quotation marks and often it isn’t clear who is talking, or whether they are talking or you are in their mind. If it wasn’t for the tournament I would have probably not have bothered with this book after wading through the first 2-3 chapters.

Ivory’s life is complicated and fascinating, but difficult to construct when broken up into non consecutive pieces and portrayed as it is. The characters and settings are very good (vivacious and interesting), and if the story was reconstructed in a more linear fashion it would be “unputdownable”. Sopinka is trying to show Ivory’s life in bursts, not unlike field recordings that you listen to in the lab and try to make sense of, but it really is too much effort for the ending result.

The novel is lyrical and touches on a lot of interesting themes (women’s roles and choices in the worlds of art and science, for example) , but the first third of it moves like thick pudding through a fine sieve. If you get through that, the last half is so much more interesting and rewarding than the first one, although it rushes through some plot points that feel like they shouldn’t be rushed through. There are too many coincidences in the plot (get captured and escape from prison camps much?), there are familial ties that are severed with no explanation or time to mourn (what happened to her brothers? Did Lev really breeze through retelling his brother’s death with not even a moment’s pause?) , and then there is the peculiar animal languages dictionary that is constantly evoked but never really explained to the reader, and you wonder why.

In short, this is a book in need of a more adept writer or a much stricter editor. The bones that are there are interesting enough to merit wading through the first part if you’re interested in contemporary fiction. There’s something there that with time and experience could probably make for a masterpiece some day.

It’s interesting that the Tournament of Books pitched “The Dictionary of Animal Languages” against “Washington Black” as the first has a weak beginning and a strong ending and the last has a strong beginning and a weak ending. Could they have made a perfect collaborative novel together? Jokes aside, Sopkina’s book is a better, if far from perfect, work of fiction, and her novel is lyrical while “Washington Black” only tries really hard to be. “Dictionary”‘s characters are better written and conceived, its plot, once reconstructed, is more compelling, and even its treatment of the animal conservation theme and social pariah/underdog themes are more nuanced and compelling. That is surprising considering the idea behind “Washington Black” seems more powerful and interesting than the one behind “Dictionary”, but Sopinka totally wins in execution against Edugyan.

The Tournament of Books: Washington Black

I recently finished reading the eighth Tournament of Books 2019 book, Esi Edugyan’s “Washington Black“, which is running against Heidi Sopinka’s “The Dictionary of Animal Languages” in the third round of the competition.

This is the only Tournament of Books book that I heard of before the competition. It made quite a splash when it came out last year, a sort of slave/coming of age narrative with steam punk slapped on for flavour. Sounds interesting, right?

The first half of this novel is. The story of Washington’s childhood (if you can call it that) as a slave, Kit’s story, Faith plantation, Barbados and the Wilde family — they’re all vibrant, alive, speaking volumes through history. Washington’s escape, his travels, his survivor’s guilt, they’re all fascinating, complex, well written, until Washington reaches Canada, where everything grinds to a halt. The narrative enters a kind of swampy ennui, characters become cardboard specimens viewed through milky, distorted glass, and the only thing that maintains the earlier vibrancy is the setting. It was as if all the narrative urge was drained out of this novel and Edugyan was working for a word quota. Slash the novel after the point where Christopher steps into the ice storm and you not only lose nothing, you end up with a better narrative. Christopher trapped and Washington free is more interesting than Christopher being a man-child unable to face the world and Washington chasing him to get no answers. And the “love story” between Tanna and Washington feels more like a last minute after thought than a believable, integral part of the tale.

This could have been an excellent novella, instead of an almost good novel that lost narrative steam halfway through. What a shame.

Montblanc The Beatles Psychedelic Purple Review

A few years ago I used to be really on the FOMO limited edition fountain pen ink band wagon, but over the last two years my ink purchases have petered out to nothing. At some point I realized that any limited edition ink that I buy is bound to be pretty damn close to an ink that I already own, and a person can only have too many inks (IMHO). How many inks can you use at one given time anyway?

The precious few new bottles of ink that I have have all been given to me as part of large (vintage) fountain pen purchases, and so I haven’t felt comfortable reviewing them. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, do you? Then again, the gift was from the store, not the ink maker, so here we are.

The Montblanc Beatles Psychedelic Purple limited edition ink comes in a very groovy box, that is very well designed. Normally I couldn’t care less about ink packaging (excepts as it pertains to price — looking at you Pilot Iroshizuku. You started the trend and you know it), but someone really put some thought in this.

The little ribbon tab helps open the box easily

Look at that design:

I’ve never seen an ink bottle’s cap protected before, but then again this is Montblanc:

The bottle itself is pretty conservatively designed, but classically pretty:

The ink itself is a rich, saturated purple with a good amount of shading (despite being pretty dark), and a very slow drying time. It’s one of the few cases where the actual ink matches the colour of the packaging. There’s some sheen to the ink, but I’ve seen it sheen only on Tomoe River Paper, and it’s super hard to photograph.

I love this ink’s shade of purple (it’s slightly more to the red side of purple than the blue), but this ink was a hot mess in terms of behaviour on various papers. This ink is usable only on Rhodia/Clairfontaine and Tomoe River Paper, it becomes a bleeding, spreading monster on everything else. It also takes a really long time to dry (not surprising, as it’s a very saturated ink), which means that it’s going to be a no-no for left handed users and you really have to take care where you put your hand when you write with the stuff.

And that’s the thing. This is an expensive, not readily available ink that is finicky and temperamental in a hue that’s not so rare as to be unobtainable. Why spend good money and time buying it if you can probably get a spot on match from Diamine? Montblanc Psychedelic Purple cost about $40 when it came out and $80 now for a 50ml bottle. Diamine Majestic Purple costs $15 for an 80ml bottle. You do the math.

If you enjoy hunting for limited edition inks as part of the hobby, that’s fine. Just don’t get swept away by the marketing and the hype. Remember: there’s a very good chance that that expensive limited edition ink is not very different from the ones that you already have and don’t use, or that you can get a similar hue for less than half the price from Diamine.

This Week’s Long Run: Ducks, Gulls and Cafe Cats

This week’s long run was another one in perfect weather. Things are heating up though, so I’m savouring these as long as they last.

This little bittern basked in the morning light. You can almost hear him admiring his reflection in the water.

A gull was standing guard over a few rowboats at one of the river piers:

A mallard sunned itself at the riverside:

And a couple of ducks grazed together:

10k run done:

I went for a post run coffee and a sandwich and was greeted by the cafe’s cat: