Summary: This is a very versatile notebook with enough flair and cachet to squelch my Moleskine love affair. Heavy journal-writers and notebook-capture types will want to also order a set of bigger rings. Also: make sure you buy the dividers.

Oh how I love Levenger.

A couple of years ago I fell in love with goofy but loveable notebooks called the Moleskine. Everybody has seen them and I don’t think anyone doesn’t love them. They have great paper, a clever design and a probably-more-than-slightly-exagerated-history that I find endearing. The only problem is that I can’t remove pages from a notebook. I hate tearing, and I don’t like the smaller Moleskines with perforated pages. Its a sickness, I know.

The other problem is that sometimes I want grid paper and sometimes I want ruled. I don’t like having several different notebooks that I have to label, since the Moleskine binding isn’t exactly sturdy and moves around a lot and my labels are difficult to keep in place because of the texture of the cover.

Lately I’ve really been enjoying my Rope Case, Shirt Pocket Briefcase, and other assorted niceties from the people at Levenger, so I decided I would give the Circa notebooks a try.

They come from Levenger in a nice gift box which opens up into a cloth bag containing a quite striking notebook with a luxurious leather cover. I got the Junior size, but they also make an 8.5×11 flavor. That seems like an awful lot of notebook.

The leather is lovely, the rings are solid, and the stitching seems quite solid with only one exception—the pen-loop.

As you can see, the pen loop can hover on the outside of the notebook. I don’t know if that is how it is intended to be used, because there is an adhesive near the stitching underneath, and it doesn’t seem very tight. But if you have the pen inside the notebook it stays open, which is even worse. So I’m crossing my fingers, gritting my teeth, and hoping that I’m using the pen loop properly and that my observations about the stitching and adhesive are incorrect and that it will last for years.

If you’ve been reading the 43Folders Board lately, you’ll notice that I am, in fact, using a Lamy Safari fountain pen and so far love it. Everyone seems to think they’re a solid pen and I think it is quite nice.

The Circa Junior is only a little bit larger than the standard Moleskine notebook.

The upside is that instead of carrying two or three Moleskines, I can mix up my paper types and carry one Circa Junior. I thought the binding was an open ring, but they’re closed. You can of course find a lot of places that sell “rollabind” rings, but I am not entirely sure what size would work best for me yet. The small rings the Junior comes with can accommodate around 80 pages plus dividers and clear cover “sheets” that I tape photographs to. I thought about getting a set of “antique silver” looking rings but they only seem to come in small or large. I think medium is more my speed. It will keep the notebook manageable and still have plenty of room for a lot of writing, brainstorming, mind-mapping, network diagrams, journal entries, note-taking, and more.

I am really impressed with Levenger’s paper.

It feels great, looks great, and their ruled paper has an awesome little margin carved out for little diagrams, navigation notes and other analog meta-data, and the title of the page can be easily surfed because of a nice pre-defined area that you can use for subject, topic, and date and time. Pretty clever.

Since I do GTD via the 3×5 bus, I have seen Levenger’s index cards and found them really lovely, just a little too heavily branded for my taste and not as functional as printing my own using the DIY Planner templates. I have never used a Levenger notepad or anything else, so I didn’t know what to expect with this paper. It is really excellent.

Only a tiny bit of bleed-through in a couple of spots from a fountain pen, and the feel is great. I suspect my little dabs of bleeding are from my novice fountain penmanship and not a poor choice in paper type by Levenger. Rollerball and ballpoint, and of course pencil, are completely clean.

Since the paper is rolla-bound, you can easily tug a sheet out or put one in, and they also stay secure in the notebook. I was surprised that the notebook feels so sturdy seeing as how they’re just bound in place by little rings, but it really does work well. Plus, it is easy to flip through, organize, and manage note-taking standing up by whipping the front cover all the way around to the back giving you a nice writing surface.

One of the nicest things about the Moleskine is that goofy little pocket in the back. Everyone loves the pocket. It is simple, clean, and useful. Levenger thought of that too, of course, so alongside the pen loop are three pockets.

You can stuff a few business cards in there, some money, or of course, 3×5 cards into the pockets of the Circa Junior. I’m always nervous I’m going to stretch out a pocket though, so I’ll be trying hard to keep it very light back there. I am using mine to hold 3 buisness cards, 4 index cards, a couple of bills and there appears to be no stretching. Perhaps I’m being too kind to it, since it will be hurled into bags, hauled out and used hard.

This is a great notebook. It feels great in your hands, it can be easily organized and changed-up as your needs change, and you can easily archive past rollabind pages in binders sold all over the web. I looked around and didn’t see anything from Levenger that does that, but the market already has several options there.

If you’re going to separate your pages by subject or type of paper, you will need to get those cool colored tab dividers. They’re nice, and labelmaker friendly. I’d also recommend the clear front and back covers to further protect your pages and give you a nice little canvas to tape things to, or to affix a couple of post-it 3×5’s or index tabs to flag individual pages.

It is likely that I’ll end up “modding” this notebook a bit with some swanky rings if I can find some that look nice. Honestly I don’t know if those metallic ones are really tacky from looking online, but I have a suspicion that they are. I will probably order a bigger set of plastic ones instead if I decide I need to hold more pages at one time.

Time will tell if the pen loop is perfectly fine or a disaster. I wish they had more colors to choose from, mainly because I love the orange leather of my rope case and a ballistic nylon version would probably sell very well. I don’t think I would have gotten leather if there was a ballistic option.

Its just me fiddling with my Shirt Pocket Briefcase, Rope Case, and some cards.

If you were just curious for a “3D exploration” of this products instead of the still photographs, you may find this interesting, embarassing, or both.

It is very difficult to use these things one-handed, so there are some moments where it would appear that you should be paying close attention to something that isn’t there.

I just got new 3×5 ‘folders’ for my Rope Case, so I’m kind of playing with them a bit.

the movie is online and ready for your viewing pleasure. Warning: it is set to music.

Let me know if this answers your questions. Relevant sections:

Disaster Recovery for Index Cards

Hands-on Real Live Project Sample

I created a new context for the purposes of this document, really. While I’m out sick with this flu or whatever the hell I have, I created a @sickday context.

Let me know if this answers any questions, or creates new ones.

Draft 41

Several of you have written me and told me that you’ve just placed orders with Levenger. Kudos! Take the plunge! You’ll never know if you can rock this LoFi productivity if you don’t try it, and Levenger sure makes it more luxurious, if nothing else.