The Beautiful, Beautiful Breakup

I absolutely, totally, 100% buy into gimmicky books, especially those that employ pretty art (see: Bitter With Baggage Seeks Same, featuring those shoot-me-now adorable chicks). My latest Barnes and Nobel crush, then, is Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry. As if the ridiculiously long name wasn't winning enough, the book is about a hypothetical auction that takes place on 2/14/2009—THE FUTURE!—to sell off a now-dunzo couple's shared personal belongings. I mean, genius. For some reason, I think this would be an ideal v-day book, and then I question my sanity.

ANYWAY, it's written/compiled by this art director slash illustrator chica Leanne Shapton, and there was an article in the NYT about her and her project today. Her take on consumption and the thing-filled nature of our lives (which she's not necessarily criticizing here) just make me want to read and own and hold this thing more:

“It’s sort of about how reliant we are on our things to define us,” Ms. Shapton said, acknowledging that there is a strain of what she described as somewhat “suffocating discernment” running through the protagonists’ lives.

“But I wanted to balance that with a pretty genuine love of very private meaning,” she said, adding that most of the things put up for sale are “those kinds of things that mean everything to the person who owned them and nothing to anyone else.”

Some such things that mean nothing to nobody from Important Artifacts...gotta love the Nuvaring.

Unfortunately, the internet is being a total fucking slacker and is serving up like no pictures of said publication. GAWD. Thankfully, there is this video that gives a better sense of the layouts and content without spoiling all the fun: