Booknote: Sorted Books

Nina Katchadourian, Sorted Books. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2013. ISBN: 978-1-4251-1329-6.

Genre: nonfiction
Subgenre: literary, photography, art, books
Format: small hardback
Source: Berea branch of the Madison County (KY) Public Library

The idea of creating poems and phrases by stacking books so you can see the spines of the books is a nice one. By now though, this is the kind of thing (hipster) librarians and bibliophiles (with a bit too much time on their hands) do for fun and post in places like Instagram. This concept is similar to those bibliophiles who take a book cover and cover their faces or other body part to make "art." It's cute, but it is no big deal.

This leads me to this book. The author went to a variety of high end libraries and archives in search of books. Given all the work the author did to find said books, I expected a lot better results. Sure, a few items are a bit witty, but the majority of the poems and phrases fell flat pretty fast. A trip to a local basic big bookstore may have yielded better titles for better results.

In the end, this was nice, but it was just OK.

2 out of 5 stars.