You must read this book if:

1. You love books
2. You admire brilliant humor
3. Your response to most contemporary art is, "Oh, come on -- seriously? I mean, *seriously*?"

After reading this book, you'll still retain factors 1. and 2., but you'll enjoy some relief from 3.

Katchadourian's premise is so dazzlingly simple, you'll kick yourself for not having thought of it first. At least you will if you're me and you own literally thousands of books and wish you'd thought of doing this with them. Then again, Katchadourian is working with book collections all over the world, not her own stuff. Then again, I haven't even told you what she does yet, so maybe I should stop muttering to myself and get to the point, already.

Nina Katchadourian is an artist whose "sorted books" are photographs of books. Specifically, she shuffles titles together to make statements -- usually funny, sometimes meditative, occasionally devastating.

The photo on the cover is an example of how these pictures look and work. Sometimes, instead of stacking the books, she leaves them on the shelf surrounded by books whose spines are turned toward the wall.

One example of this latter method is the following three titles turned out for the viewer:

Hamlet
What's Eating You?
Hey, Man! Open Up And Live!

Katchadourian has a lot of fun when books by different authors have the same title:

The Story Of My Life
Why Me? [by Frida Waterhouse]
Why Me? [by Garrett Porter and Patricia A. Norris]

...or when someone owns multiple copies of the same book:

Repeat After Me
Are You Confused?
Are You Confused?

Although some of the sortings have as few as two titles:

I Am A Conductor
And Do You Also Play The Violin?

...the longer ones are a romp:

Relax
When I Relax I Feel Guilty
When I Say No, I Feel Guilty
God Always Says Yes!
Don't Say YES When You Want To Say NO

(She makes it look so easy!)

Occasionally, the sortings rhyme:

The Death Of Superman
The Fall
Off The Wall

Although there are frequent allusions to literature, history, or art, Katchadourian is always playful, never snooty:

Primitive Art
Just Imagine
Picasso
Raised By Wolves

Some of the humor is on the dark side:

Sixteen Americans
Death And Disasters
Twelve Americans

...and not all the sortings are humorous. Some read like somber meditations:

Made Of Iron
The Victor Weeps
The End Is Near!
Yes, But...
Still
It Hurts.

...and others are painfully apt:

Indian History For Young Folks
Our Village
Your National Parks

(Ouch.)

Best of all, some of the sortings mention books that pique the curiosity and make the viewer want to raid her local used bookstore. ("Very Bad Poetry," edited by Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras! "The Literary Guillotine," whose authors I can barely read but whose cover art displays, yes, a guillotine!)

I haven't even mentioned all my favorites here, because there are just so many. If this representative sampling doesn't make you want to check the book out, I don't know what will. I found it at my local library, but I want to add it to my wish list, and keep it in mind for various friends on gift-giving occasions. I also don't know how I'm going to resist the urge to indulge in some "sortings" of my own, if only to get a better understanding of just how much work goes into this deceptively casual art.

( )

The art of book sorting. ( )

Simple, powerful premise: "I spent days shifting and arranging books, composing them so that their titles formed short sentences. The exercise was intimate, like a form of portraiture, and it felt important that the books I selected should function as a cross section of the larger collection." The hidden theme within a library accrued piecemeal. ( )

This is so brilliant! Why didn’t I think of this?! Now I do want to steal the idea. If I can find the “right” books, I can see taking photos and making greeting cards using this technique. It would also be fun to leave books around for others to find so I can see if they see the message presented; I’m often so unobservant that unless I was looking for it I might not notice.

I normally love books for their contents, not their covers, and only occasionally for the titles, but I love art too, and this is inspired art.

Sorted books refers to books placed so that they say or mean something. I need to give a few samples of the included book clusters in order to adequately describe them:

A few examples:

Animal Dreams – Secret Gardens – Where the Sidewalk Ends – No Boundary – Where the Wild Things Are

and

Dyslexia – October 57 – October 75

and

Indian History for Young Folks – Our Village – Your National Parks

and the last one in the book:

Hope and Have – The Life That Counts

There are so many wonderful ones, some funny, some profound, almost all very smart, and I’d love to reveal a bunch of them, but it’ll be more fun for people to read the book and discover them for themselves. (I didn’t “get” several, including the few foreign language ones that were included.)

So now I’m looking at my shelved books and trying to figure out how to play with them, and yes, I’d love to make some greeting cards to send to friends.

I borrowed this from the library. If there were even more book clusters shown it’s the kind of book I’d love to own. It’s a perfect coffee table type book, because you can open it anywhere and appreciate what’s on the page.

Thanks again to Melody for alerting me to this book. Reading it these last few days has been a perfect experience for me, one worth savoring.

Highly recommend for artists and book lovers and readers and writers. ( )