Get the better one
Look, I know they look the same. I’m trained to find the differences. One has two ribbons; the other has only one. One comes with more sheets. The paper stock is a little yellower on one. Perhaps the width & height is a little different, too, but I don’t know which would be which there. That’s it. They are the same. Mottled, faux-leather cover; faux-fabric bookmark; elastic band covering the whole affair. One is a pleasure to use. The other is a Moleskine. Welcome to Leuchtturm text.
Leuchtturm1917 is a German family brand of hardback-ish notebooks that are a true pleasure to write on & own. The sheets are thin but take fountain pen ink well. The layout is minimalist enough to please a nerd like me. The cover wears well. How they look functionally identical to a Moleskine is beyond me. Surely some court case must be keeping the two businesses functional & away from one another’s throats, since if I were one, I would sue the other into a fine paste. But it doesn’t matter, because Moleskine is an empire and Leuchtturm is not. You’re rewarded for finding something that takes a little effort. Here, the idea of a ripoff is irrelevant: this is the real deal, the thing you want to bang up for the better part of a year.
A notebook as fancy as this is fraught. I speak, often, of Moleskine syndrome: buying something that looks so nice & precious that you don’t actually treat it like the object that it is. Notebooks exist to be lived with, filled, archived, and filled again. You should not hesitate with your notebook. If you do, there is something wrong.
Notebooks are effectively infinite. You can always buy another one of them. You can fill them at whatever speed you so desire, and nobody will judge you. In this way, the notebook itself is a mirror of where you’re at. Sometimes I go a long time without poking in my notebook. Sometimes I fill several in a year. I have no idea what drives any of this, but I can tell you that I do it rather unthinkingly by now, and I try hard not to judge myself for any lapses. They simply are. I was busy living.
Back to Leuchtturm, a superior product. On top of its lived parameters, it is also unpretentious, which is what you want your notebooks to be. Imagine possessing a shred of ego when deciding what notebook to own. Like “oh, yes, I will consider this to be a fashion accessory. I know people do that. Leuchtturm arguably qualifies. But Moleskine leans into it. The mere fact that Leuchtturm does not do this is itself a feature, a secret handshake, one nobody else needs to know unless they carefully inspect the rubbed-out logo on the back of your notebook.
Moleskine calls themselves “the heir and successor to the legendary notebook used by artists and thinkers over the past two centuries: among them Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and Bruce Chatwin.” God, who cares? Does Mead call themselves the notebook of Kurt Cobain? What matters, always, is this: what are you going to do?