I love these sketch books, hard bound and quite nice paper. I even paint on mine with gouache it does wave a little but rarely goes through. The small landscape shape is so handy to carry around in my bag and the cover can be painted or decorated with poscas. Worth extra $. I go through a lot of sketch books and these are my preference, I always buy several, have them in different sizes and I even bought a couple for my friends. Highly recommend.