The battle of the A5s

I recently bought myself a Kindle Paperwhite which I am enjoying immensely. I ordered myself a couple of cases, one of which was the Malden eReader sleeve which is on sale at the moment. I've always admired the ochre Maldens, despite never owning one, so thought that this would be a cheap and useful way to enjoy one without getting another binder. The eReader sleeve is very similar to the iPad sleeve that Steve reviewed here. As it turns out, I returned the eReader sleeve as it was a bit on the large size for my Kindle, but the ochre leather was beautiful. 

I've been using the A5 Mulberry planner, but despite loving it I'd really been missing having a notepad at the back. I still haven't got round to selling the red Amazona and that does have a notepad pocket, so I suppose I've been a bit indecisive about which A5 to keep. For a while, I did consider keeping both, but I know what I'm like and hence we have the battle of the A5s! 

Here are the initial contenders. 

    

I had thought that they would be the only ones I would be choosing between, but I admit that the siren song of the ochre A5 Malden was hard to ignore. The little train of events went something like this:

• Fall in love with the yummy ochre leather on the eReader sleeve
• Tell myself repeatedly that I already have two perfectly decent A5s to choose from
• Find myself looking at pictures of ochre Maldens in the Philofaxy Flickr pool (tell myself repeatedly to stop looking and fail)
• Find out that ochre A5s have 25% off at WHSmith (sadly out of stock now)
• Remember that I still have a £25 gift voucher for WHSmith!

And the final line up is...

I ordered two Maldens as the leather finish can be so different and returned one. I was very lucky to receive two that had perfect rings with no damage. At this point, I think that I'd already made my decision that the Malden would be the keeper. It took me quite a while to decide that my crimson Malden was 'the one', but I just didn't want to take as long with settling on the A5 for me. 

I could definitely see Indiana Jones having an ochre A5 on his desk when he's lecturing.