The local drug stores have been a bust. CVS only had wide ruled Caliber brand and nothing else in the Composition Book category save Moleskine giant Cahiers, which were tempting but VERY expensive.*

Walgreens had meager offerings this season as well- not a single Mead book in sight, None of the cute Studio C books**. A mere 2 boxes of Wexford College Ruled Composition books in the standard black and primary color offerings. The whole Back to School section was… half an aisle when it normally is 2 full aisles. Damn you COVID19!!!

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I bought two Wexford College ruled Composition Books for 79 cents each. One black and one bright blue. It felt decadent. Total with tax was $1.68.

When not on sale these books are $3.49.

These are everything a GOOD composition book should be: Solid tight stitching, thick stiff chip board covers, generously well textured spine tapes, smooth paper with a barely there pale blue college ruling.

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And the paper? Oh wow is it great. It handles wet liquid inks with ease, sheen shows up, lines stay true to nib size, no bleedings, no feathering, and enough tooth for a pencil to feel good.

The down side is that the only have 80 sheets. But when they have such darn nice paper? When they are on sale for 79 cents? And when they have the best covers of the good paper composition notebooks? Yeah, these are winners. If I hadn’t just bought 16 (sure 6 of those notebooks were dogs) I’d stock up on these.

*I’ll wait until they have them in clearance and then review them. I do like a giant sketchy area for thinking.

**I’ve since learned Studio C has rebranded (Thanks NoteBookJoy!) as Carolina Pad Company, which seems like a bad idea given their wide range of products. Do I really want to buy a lunch bag from a pad company? Eh