School Supplies for Grown-Ups

A back to school bonanza for notebook lovers and pen collectors

Back to school season is in full swing, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. In fact, we think it’s time for the students-at-heart to celebrate with some beautiful back to school supplies for ourselves.

For today’s newsletter, we’ve rounded up the pens, pencils, notebooks, and scholarly tools we can’t live without, plus several items on our grown-up school supply wishlists.

This newsletter includes affiliate links. If you aren’t in a space to purchase any of these items, we hope you enjoy window shopping! There’s no pressure to spend money here, just a fun list to facilitate that back-on-campus feeling we’re all craving.

One of our most frequently asked questions is, “how do you annotate your books?” We’ll share more details at a later date, but for today, here are the quintessential annotation tools we keep in our pencil bags.

Page Flags: Have you seen Sara’s teaching copy of Pride and Prejudice? She can’t annotate without page flags. (Chelsey, meanwhile, dog-ears like a heathen.)

Transparent Sticky Notes: If you don’t love the idea of writing in your books, transparent sticky notes are your new best friend. Stick these notes to the page and underline, write, or muse in the margins without marking up your novel.

Pencils: Sara loves Arteza pencils for margin-writing, and Chelsey prefers Muji mechanical pencils.

.38 Fine Point Pens: Chelsey has tested LOTS of fine point pens for notetaking but reaches for Muji or Uniball most often.

Subtle Highlighters: Zebra. Midliners. Enough said.

There’s no such thing as too many notebooks—not when you’re recording notes from a Novel Pairings lecture or collecting quotes from your favorite classic novel. Of course, we’ve got our favorites, but let’s not deny the appeal of a simple, old fashioned legal pad.

Leuchtturm 1917: We think these stylish, smooth-papered notebooks are worth every penny, but there are plenty of excellent alternatives on our list.

Rhodia: Their paper is sooooo smoooooth. If you like writing fast, or using lots of messy mind maps (like Chelsey), you’ll join the Rhodia fan club in no time.

Five Star & Composition Notebooks: The classics. You just can’t go wrong with them.

Be honest: you saw all the college dorm decor in Target and kind of wished you could go back to campus, right? This list is the next best thing: everyday items you’d carry around to class that also come in handy for work, for travel, or for fun.

Water bottle: It seems like everyone has a favorite. Hydration is good for your brain, right? We like the sleek look of Simple Modern water bottles for sips in between podcast recordings.

Bluetooth Earbuds: Sara can’t live without her Air Pods and Chelsey would be lost without her Tozo earbuds. How else would we listen to audiobooks and chase down runaway toddlers?

Blue Light Blocking Glasses: Do we have research to back up the use of these glasses? We don’t know. They seem to help with laptop-staring, plus they’re cute.

You can find all of our Fall Semester selections linked in our Bookshop.org storefront, but if you’re looking for a different edition or supplemental readings, this list may help.

Wishing you all sharpened pencils, nice teachers, and fresh notebook pages.

P.S. In case you missed it: