If you don't know about Moleskine, you should.  Each of the many varieties comes with a pamphlet telling the "Moleskine story"; how writers and artists used to choose this notebook during the 20th century to record ideas, sketches, poetry, whatever.  The original company that made them in Italy stopped making them a few decades ago; a new Moleskine company began making them in 1997.  They come in endless varieties of the original notebook:  ruled, unruled, grid paper, music notation paper, etc, in a variety of sizes and colors.  The square bound notebooks have a hard cover, band and ribbon bookmark; Moleskine also produces various sizes of "soft cover" notebooks which are staple bound.  The paper is always acid free.