James Ward
Adventures in Stationery
A Journey Through Your Pencil Case
Profile Books, 2015
What's inside?
Celebrate the fascinating 2,000-year history of office supplies.
Recommendation
Proving that any subject can be interesting if you delve into it deeply, stationery aficionado James Ward offers a surprisingly entertaining history of office supplies. Did you know that Henry David Thoreau contributed to pencil manufacture? Or that the Monkees’ Mike Nesmith inherited $25 million earned by his mother’s invention, Liquid Paper? Or that Norwegians wore paper clips as a symbol of resistance to the Nazis? Ward, who blogs on I Like Boring Things, unearths the magic in the mundane, relating the often-convoluted stories behind the creation of paper, pens, pencils, paper clips, staples and tape. Don’t expect business case studies of 3M or the Parker Pen Company; Ward is a cultural connoisseur who tempers his enthusiasm for the stationery cabinet with full awareness of its absurdity. getAbstract recommends his informative, memorable and fun essays to anyone who ever borrowed a Sharpie from the office or made a necklace of paper clips.
About the Author
James Ward writes the blog I Like Boring Things. He co-founded the annual Boring Conference, “a one-day celebration of the mundane, the ordinary, the obvious and the overlooked.”
Comment on this summary