Sharp insights into pencils

I always read with a pencil in hand but it can't be any old variety

There are two kinds of reader: those who read with a pencil in their hand, and those who don't. (For "pencil", you may read, if you like, "pencil or pen", though inking marginalia strikes me as decadent and hubristic.) For me, a pencil is a reading tool, and since bookish types are no less prone than anyone else to commodity fetishism, I have developed a profound interest in my favoured kind of implement, surely among the greatest inventions of mankind: the mechanical pencil.

The mechanical pencil doesn't need sharpening; it clips to pages, thus doing service as a bookmark; it usually has a built-in eraser (do I ever erase? I do not); and it comes in inexhaustible technological and aesthetic varieties. (I heart rubber grips, as maybe you do.) There is always a new model to discover. The most exciting thing that happened to me yesterday was the postman's delivering a brace of the remarkable Kuru Toga pencils, which contain actual gears that rotate the lead through a few degrees every time it touches paper. (See it in action here, and then delve, via the right column, into the amazing subculture of video pencil reviews.) The Kuru Toga's packaging messages are inspirational. No more "chisel edge"! "Delivers a clean, consistent and smooth writing line"! What's more, it comes with special leads that contain "400 million nano diamonds". What is a nano diamond? Who cares? My incredulous sarcastic scrawls will from now on glow with added nano-bling.

Heartening, isn't it, to know that in this virtual age, massive-brained pencil scientists are working and plotting in secret underground laboratories to create miniaturised lead-rotating engines? Writing with the Kuru Toga for the first time was an! illumin ating experience: I realised that I had already unconsciously adopted the habit of rotating my pencils, precisely so as to wear down the lead evenly on all sides. Now this pencil is doing it for me. I feel liberated, the better to concentrate on creative vitriol. Yes, the Kuru Toga is a tiny labour-saving revolution for pencillers everywhere.

Delightful as it is, the Kuru Toga does not fulfil all my pencil needs. Indeed, no single pencil could ever requite my desire's excess. A full-length mechanical pencil is fine to nestle inside the book I'm currently reading, but I also need much shorter ones to clip to the unlined Moleskines that I fill with ideas for unreadable books. Muji's aluminium hexagonal model is decent for a while, but the clips break off. I tried Filofax-branded replacements but, mysteriously, the barrels always unscrewed themselves in my bag. (Were they trying to tell me something?) So I humbly turn to you, fellow mechanical-pencil-fanciers, for advice. What is the best miniature pencil out there?


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