Paper Addiction

Hi, my name is Iris, and I’m a paper addict. Yes, you hear that right: I love paper and the things that are made from them.

Mainly books, of course. There is nothing more wonderful than the smell of a freshly printed book or magazine or even newspaper. My favourite book smell is emanated by the Springer LNCS (Lecture notes on Computer Science) series, right when the books come out of the plastic wrapping from shipping. The smooth, glossy pages are wonderful, but the smell…

I have met many nerds and their vast libraries, and pretty much all of us are very protective of our books. Every time I see somebody dog-earing a book or, even worse, marking in it, I have to exercise great restraint not to become homicidal… But that’s a topic for another time. Because here, I want to talk about paper, and my love for paper goes beyond books.

I love letter paper and can hardly pass by postcards in the museums I am visiting (even though I’m not writing many of either these days). And I love notebooks. Notebooks of all sizes, of all prices, from the lovely paperblanks to standard notebooks for school, whether squared or lined or blank.

And the nice thing about Japan is that the Japanese seem to share my enthusiasm for paper. Many people still have paper diaries, even though pretty much everybody carries a smartphone these days. Bookstores are always full with people of all ages, and so are libraries. And there are many stationary shops selling notebooks, and: They come in all colors. I love making colorful statements too, so I couldn’t resist (and yes, I did try) getting the whole septcouleur notebook collection:

Septcouleur Japanese Notebooks

Lovely, aren’t they? Even though they only come lined, whereas I prefer squared paper (the mathematician in me, I guess), but they’re still great. Now I just need to give myself permission to actually use them.

Because, the interesting thing is, that while I still do a lot of “real” writing on paper, most of it is not meant to be kept, so I use scrap paper or the back of old flyers for example. I do hope I can break this habit somehow so I can use my new notebooks – maybe I should just start writing more interesting stuff? (I actually did already, but more on that one later ;-))