reviewed by John T.D. Keyes

For those who still make plans and keep records with good old-fashioned pencil and paper, not a battery-powered, handheld digital device, here's a potentially useful and romantic little travel organizer.

(to order online, click on book cover.)

Its format immediately made me think of the Moleskine series of notebooks, right down to the accordion-style pocket in the back and the elastic fastener that keeps it shut when it's burgeoning with receipts and scraps of paper. The romantic aspect recalls the art-fiction series that captured the epistolary relationship of Griffin and Sabine back in the 1990s. Here's another analogy: It's the sort of diary that might have been purchased by Joe Banks, the naïve character played by Tom Hanks in 1990's Joe Versus the Volcano. It's a mock artefact that evokes the days when Burberry and Abercrombie & Fitch were the outfitters of choice for any self-respecting gentleman about to embark on a voyage to the Dark Continent.

Turns out, the Globetrotter's LogBook -- #1 Countries of the World comes out of Belgium, birthplace, I need not remind you, of that intrepid world traveler Tintin. Its publisher is Morton, Diaz & Cook (motto: "Explore the World, Keep a Souvenir), and it's the first of six travel diaries the company has issued so far. The company's website, www.globetrotterslogbook.com, encourages users to register their own logbooks (there's a unique serial number on page 7), sign up for a newsletter, enter contests, participate in a user forum and in general foster an online community of nomads who can share travel tips and stories. The Globetrotter's Ranking area is accessible online only by those who have registered.

The diary, meanwhile, is such a pretty little thing (9 x 12.5 cm) that you almost hate to write in it, which rather defeats the purpose. Marred only by advertisements inside the front cover (for Timberland) and back (Hertz), it is painstakingly art-directed right down to the tiniest detail, from the typeface to the graphics to the paper stock and its faux watermarks.

The first third provides thumbnail-sized information boxes for each of the world's 193 independent countries and 58 "inhabited Dependencies, Territories & Autonomous Regions." It's basically a list of the places you might visit, which you can check off in the space provided; good luck trying to get a customs officer to stamp it.

The middle third, from page 83 to 134, is called "Notes and Things," but it might just as well have been called "Over to You," as this is the section you get to use as a diary or notebook. Even here the editors can't resist adding a fillip of detail. Running along the bottom of each otherwise-blank page is a bit of travel-related trivia, some more useful than others: Travelers to Uruguay might be grateful for having been forewarned on page 114 that "many shops and museums in Uruguay close when it rains." Those who didn’t already know, as told on page 119, that "most people live in poverty in most African countries" should probably stay home. It's not quite so clear what one is meant to make of the tidbit on page 117: "More than 1 million earths would fit inside the sun."

The final third of the book encourages you to record all of your vaccinations; in this 12-page section, there are five spots designated for yellow fever alone, followed by 34 more spaces to record the likes of cholera and smallpox. (The editors obviously envisage an extraordinarily intrepid customer.) Following that is a 25-page section allowing you to keep a detailed record of every flight you take; there is room for 100 flights, and each little box encourages you to get a signature from the captain or purser. Good luck with that, too. Strangely, there's no section specifically set aside for passage on tramp steamers or mule trains.

The diary concludes with maps, a 300-year calendar (for those whose travel might include astral projection) and various almanac-style trivia about planet Earth (longest rivers, highest annual deforestation by country, etc.). Plus that ad for Hertz, right opposite the accordion pocket.

It makes you wonder, who exactly is the target audience for this thing? A wealthy, young web-savvy Indiana Jones with a digital download of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth on his iPhone and a lifetime membership to Greenpeace in his hidden money pouch? It's quite possible that the Globetrotter's LogBook will appeal most to those who like the idea of travel but have no intention of going anywhere. They can dreamily flip through a copy and let their minds wander to far-away locales, and probably get almost as much bang for the buck as if they actually went somewhere. But if your idea of fun is recording each injection and each cramped airline seat, this is the place to memorialize every painful moment.