Review: The Mt. Tom Six by Four by Bob Slate

In complete opposite to the last notebook review I did, I’m ecstatic over this one, even though it has a spiral binding, and I’ve written about how much I despise spiral bindings. The Mt. Tom is a 6×4 inch 80 sheet notebook sold by Bob Slate Stationer in Cambridge, MA. The spiral binding is bright silver and tough. The paper is bright white with dusky blue college ruling. The cover is raw tan card and is stiff enough that you can write in hand.MT TOMThe paper is very nice. It responds well to juicy fountain pens and scratchy pencils and smooth Palomino Blackwings. I was quite surprised at how nice the paper responded to everything I threw at it. The construction is solid. the spirals, though the notebook lives at the bottom of my backpack, are hardly squished or bent. The stiff cover allows me to take notes on the go and is delightful for scratching out ideas on the train. The printing on the book is in red, much like their line of notebooks branded for Harvard, but is a little more subtle.MT TOM MT TOMThe price is right too, at $1.95 this notebook is not only a quality winner, but a value.MT TOM MT TOMAs for the spiral binding, I wish they would produce a composition notebook with this paper inside. It would allow for any tool to be used on it’s pages with success. I also tested out another of their notebooks, which I’ll write about later, but no where on their shelves did I see a Bob Slate composition notebook. If half as good as these, I’d buy a dozen. I suffer the spiral binding, though I loathe them, because sometimes you need a notebook where pages can be torn asunder and passed to another. To do and grocery  lists must be jotted down and fulfilled. You can’t just tear out a page of a Field Notes without destroying it’s structural integrity, rather, you keep something like this for those occasions.