Taking Things Seriously: 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance [Paperback]

Joshua Glenn (Author), Carol Hayes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 23, 2007

We all have something in our lives that while not obviously valuable, is displayed as though it were a precious and irreplaceable artifact. Inquire about the object's provenance and you'll likely be treated to a lively anecdote about how it came into your host's possession. Keep digging, and you might even crack the code of what the thing really means.

Taking Things Seriously is a wonder cabinet of seventy-five unlikely thingamajigs that have been invested with significance and transformed into totems, talismans, charms, relics, and fetishes: scraps of movie posters scavenged from the streets of New York by Low Life author Luc Sante; the World War I helmet that inoculated social critic Thomas Frank against jingoism; the trash-picked, robot-shaped hairdo machine described by its owner as a chick magnet; the bagelburned by actor Christopher Walken, moonlighting as a short-order cook. The owners of these objects convey their excitement in short, often poignant essays that invite readers to participate in the enjoyable act of interpreting things. You'll never look at the bric-a-brac on your shelves the same way again.

Editorial Reviews

Review

In an age when we're obsessed with the design, provenance, and value of every objects around us, these 75 short essays and photographs honor those magical, mysterious items that wiggle their way into our lives, and somehow into our hearts....eclectic group of creatives who eloquently describe their little pieces of Nothing Special--and why they mean everything to them. -- StepInside Design, December 2007

Short essays about treasured possessions, by artists, designers, writers and performers. The cartoonist and musician recalls playing with an assortment of rubber animals as a boy, 'acting out battles, domestic scenes, everything.' But the star was always Sunshine, above: 'one special little yellow pig.' -- New York Times Book Review, August 2007

Taking Things Seriously is a process, an experience in looking and interpreting, reminding us to take a good look at all the ordinary things around and to realize that they are each far more just that. -- FiveandaHalf.net, September 17, 2007

The Must List #9. Proving one man's trash is another's treasure, this collection of photos and essays shows how the unlikliest of things can provide inspiration. -- Entertainment Weekly, October 26, 2007

delightful, often hilarious -- Dwell, December 2007

About the Author

Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer and editor at the Boston Globe.

Carol Hayes is an award-winning designer and artist. She lives in Brooklyn.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (August 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568986904
• ISBN-13: 978-1568986906
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #542,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Objects of Interest to eveyone September 26, 2007

By P. D. Dideriksen

Format:Paperback

This book is a real original. It's great to pick up and enjoy, then pick it up again later and enjoy some more.
It encompasses something everyone does and hardly anyone really thinks about...hoarding/collecting stuff that is really important only to you. It puts a perspective on people's emotional ties to sometimes useless things. I had a lot fun reading it and sharing it.
Pat D.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Things are great! September 18, 2007

By C-

Format:Paperback

If you are somebody that enjoys things or objects, or even if you don't, this book is great fun to read. If you know somebody that tends to find interest in life - you should buy this book for them. If you know somebody that does not tend to find interest in life - you should buy this book for them, maybe it will help.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding!! September 5, 2007

By Dr. Norman S. Keller

Format:Paperback

What a gem! This is easily one of my favorite books of the year. Elegantly written adorned with beautiful images, I implore you to rush right out and buy a copy for youself--and another for a friend! Top notch stuff here. It's a keeper!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An Intriguing compilation of stories about Stuff. July 15, 2008

By Peregrine St. Clair

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Most readers will wish, as I did, that THEY had thought to compile and edit a book like this. Or at least that they had been called upon to contribute an essay to this collection of photos and stories about objects of particular and unexpected significance to the individuals. Intriguing stuff. Most of us have equally fascinating and quirky objects we've trucked around for years or even decades. I will share the book with friends who dabble in writing. We should have fun identifying our own special objects and using the concept of analyzing their importance as both a writing exercise and a way to share our idiosyncrasies. (Why DO I cling to that brass drain cover from the urinal at an abandoned mine?)

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars My Kind of Materialism October 16, 2007

By Jonah Lehrer

Format:Paperback

This was such a delightful read. Each of these (mostly short) essays extols a particular object which might, at first glance, seem like a piece of junk. But it turns out that junk is in the eye of beholder. The uplifting moral of the book is that the best "things" aren't the most expensive or shiniest or rarest. They are the ones with the most personal significance. Highly recommended.

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book I know of its kind March 17, 2011

By Byron Case

Format:Paperback

Trash digger, dumpster diver, urban scavenger-repurposer, call me what you like; I happen to have a keen eye for the potential of an object of which another person has relinquished ownership. Not necessarily its monetary potential (even though I've sold many salvaged finds) but something closer to what Kant called Ding an sich: the thing, as it is unto itself. One man's trash, removed from its place under his distorting lenses of perception and conceptualization, can be viewed afresh with the new sense of meaning imprinted by another -- a treasure.

While the seventy-five objects given to us in Taking Things Seriously weren't all hauled out of someones's refuse or found abandoned by the side of the road, each has a mysterious pull, like gravity, that draws our attention and inquiry. Each has a story. It may be the story its current custodian regales us with as we open to a page of this stimulating omnium gatherum, or it may not, yet we are nevertheless compelled by inevitable curiosity to consider whys and wherefores. For me, it was all about the sand clown. Buy the book and you'll understand.

This is a lovely, unobtrusive volume that would be a fine addition to your coffee table collection or nightstand stack. Additionally, it would make an ideal gift for the person who believes she has everything and could benefit from a reminder that there's fantastic, beautiful, and confounding diversity within the near-limitless realm of stuff.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A plate of toothsome canapés September 16, 2007

By Mr. Patrick Cates

Format:Paperback

A beautifully presented collection of bite-sized insights into objects and the minds of their owners. A coffee table without this book is a naked coffee table.

8 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm the co-editor, so I'm biased September 5, 2007

By Joshua Glenn

Format:Paperback

I'm very pleased with the critical response! This book would make an excellent gift, and it was supposed to come out nearer to the holiday season for that reason... but then all these nice reviews appeared! So it was rushed to bookstores and Amazon. Official pub. date: Sept. 5, 2007.

On July 6, 2007, Mark Frauenfelder, author of Rule the Web: How to Do Anything and Everything on the Internet---Better, Faster, Easier (and editor of Boing Boing and MAKE: Technology on Your Time) posted a sneak preview of the book to Boing Boing. Excerpt: "My friend Joshua Glenn was the founder of one of my favorite zines, Hermenaut. He edited a new book called Taking Things Seriously: 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance... I've read some samples from the book and they're wonderful."

On August 5, the New York Times Book Review and LA Times Book Review both praised Taking Things Seriously. Here's an excerpt from the LA Times review: "Why do certain things charm us so? In their new book, Taking Things Seriously, Boston Globe columnist Joshua Glenn and designer Carol Hayes delve into this 'human drive and capacity to invest inanimate objects with meaning.' They asked artists, designers, writers and thinkers to contribute photos of their precious belongings and explain their significance.... The result is a wonderfully eccentric collection of 'things' and thought-provoking essays that underscore French philosopher Bruno Latour's challenge to regard objects as more than merely matters of fact but, Glenn writes in his introduction, as 'an association, a network, a gathering' of meaning and ideas...."

On August 18, the Toronto Globe & Mail's John Allemang wrote: "In Taking Things Seriously, 75 items of otherwise lowly ambition are given the respect they deserve -- a couch arm-rest, stained with burns, where a belated mother used to rest her cigarette-smoking hand, a defunct film-editing machine that carries memories of a philosophy classmate gone round the bend, a pious sampler with one simple needle-pointed command: THOUGHTS."

On August 19, the Toronto Star featured "Taking Things Seriously" in its Ideas section. Ryan Bigge wrote: "The mundane items of Taking Things Seriously are transformed into the extraordinary through the explanations of their owners. Call it narrative alchemy.... The book also functions as a grown-up version of show and tell. Many of the book's contributors were involved with Hermenaut, a philosophy and pop-culture journal that Glenn edited and published from 1992 until 2000. Perhaps as a result of their shared history, the stories are emotionally generous, detailing divorces, death and lost love."

On August 30, Fantagraphics art director and lead designer Jacob Covery (editor of Beasts!) posted some kind words about "Taking Things Seriously" to the Fantagraphics blog, FLOG. Excerpt: "Consider the contributor list just from the world of comics: Tony Millionaire, Bill Griffith, James Kochalka, Mark Newgarden, and (yet another talented designer) Helene Silverman (of the Fantagraphics' Jimbo series and the flocked covers of We All Die Alone). These are busy people and I love when busy people make time for 'emotionally generous stories.'"

On August 31, business-and-anthropology guru Rob Walker, who writes The New York Times Magazine's "Consumed" column, wrote on his blog that Taking Things Seriously "sounds like a thoughtful take on on material culture (which is, of course, my beat, so I'm a little biased about why I think this project is such a good idea)."

On September 1, Maisonneuve, a magazine dedicated to "eclectic curiosity," described the book as "a funny, fascinating and touching book documenting the stories behind seventy-five weird and wonderful objects people treasure," and launched a Significant Objects contest.

On September 3, the Montreal Gazette published a very nice essay titled "Some Objects Are Worth Their Weight In Memories," which described several essays from Taking Things Seriously and called it a "lovely book."

On September 4, the Raincoast Books blog noted: "Artists, writers, designers, musicians, among many others, contribute their objects and try to explain their significance in the book. From everyday objects like a cocktail glass or a cigar box, to the more surprising such as a dirt pile or a one-hundred-pound practice bomb, it is a truly fascinating insight into the things that inspire and motivate our creativity." Read more ›