Seven Years ago a pair of art school students started the Sketchbook Project. It’s simple enough: for $25, they send you a blank notebook. You fill up the blank notebook and then return it, and the notebook joins a permanent collection located in a storefront in Brooklyn. All the books are carefully indexed and categorized and available for anyone and everyone to peruse.

The books themselves are ridiculously interesting — I spent four hours perusing the collection on a recent snowy morning and could’ve spent all day. I took home an official Sketchbook Project notebook and devoted the first pages to these impressions of my visit: