Perfect Design!by Anonymous

Reader Rating:

June 25, 2009: This little black book is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. OK, the silver gilded edges might be a bit much for some tastes, but I think it's a nice detail.

The real story of this book is the layout - open-form entries with no field names mean that you get to decide exactly what info you want where. The pages have 2 columns (Names&Addresses and Numbers), and that's where the direction ends. Also, unlike some other books I've seen, the publisher has actually thought ahead and realized that you probably know more M's than U's, and has rationed pages accordingly (12 pgs. for M/N, and 4 for U/V, although there are plenty of extra pages behind Z).

For me, it feels a bit large at 5.25 x 3.25", but I suppose that's mostly just a consequence of conforming to the Golden Ratio, and leaving enough width to get everything in comfortably. You can still conceal it in a pocket, but just barely. The maps are pretty much useless - a dozen small maps of large cities, rather than more useful country/continent maps.

But while there are a few things I'm not a huge fan of, the open design more than makes up for it - less really is more!