Guest Post - One Book July – the first week

Well, One Book July has started, and my first task was to decide which ‘one book’ I would be using for this project! Not such an easy matter for someone who is known for see-sawing between formats, setups and layouts over the past few months.

My first thought was that I would use my Personal Holborn, and there were a number of reasons for this:-

1. It looks great in a business meeting, in the gym, at the supermarket or in a coffee shop.
2. It is super-portable. I can literally take it anywhere.
3. The reduced ring size (25mm down from 30mm in the Cavendish or any of my A5 binders) would force me to be really ‘minimalist’ about what I carry.

However, I pretty quickly had second thoughts about this. If I wanted to use one book for *everything*, could I *really* manage for a month in a very compressed format, running my accountancy practice and several other fairly major involvements out of it? I had to take account of the portability issues that A5 has for me, but as I thought about it, it became clear that balancing the portability challenges of the A5 against the internal space challenges of the Personal, I would need the space far more quickly than I would need perfect portability!

So my binder of choice for One Book July is my chocolate brown Finsbury A5, a gift from the lovely Helen Fennell (thank you Helen). I chose this over the Bridle (also a gift), because the Bridle, although a truly beautiful binder (also a gift from Paul B), is significantly heavier, and I took the view that I had just handed myself enough portability issues without compounding them further! If I decide to stick with my One Book by the end of July, I may consider a move into the Bridle for a more permanent solution.

So that’s the first bridge crossed - no going back. More significantly, no *looking* back. The
Finsbury and I are going to spend some quality time together during July, and at the end of it I will either be a fully converted A5 user, or champing at the bit to get back to the portability of the Personal!

I’ll write more about setup next time.

So far, so good…….