Gift Giving Guy

Know someone who’s traveling this summer? While you can’t give them a passport, you can give the next best thing: a Moleskine travel notebook. Moleskine (pronounced mole-ah-SKEEN-ah) makes premium notebooks featuring a black hardcover, thread-bound spine, ribbon bookmark and elastic band to keep the book closed. Beginning in 2006, Moleskine offered pocket-sized city notebook editions, including city and transit maps, plus an index of streets for many popular travel destinations.

I keep a Moleskine Large Sketchbook for drawing up and scribbling down my ideas. I like the notebook’s sturdy feel in my hands with its durable cover and thick cream-colored pages. I’d love even it more as a Paris journal, sketching from a bistro overlooking the Seine.