This is an awesome work by Acrobat / Photographer Bill Keaggy, who witnesses tired and tossed chairs in downtown St. Louis. Each image is a mixed bag of forlorn and funny, a veritable commentary on our culture of consumption (at least as it relates to chairs). Have a look. And you ll soon sad chairs are everywhere.
oh what a sad book! i feel so badly for these chairs, but the captions make me want to laugh. it is so conflicting! connor never told me how many homeless chairs there are in missouri! i would love to see more volumes of these, for all the states. my home state would have the tiniest chairs, like dollhouses.
The cover photos are outstanding. It's so serious, the loathsome state of these chairs. It makes me want to don a Hazmat suit and sit in them for a while, just to ease their psychic pain.
We can finally bid “Goodnight” to Goodnight Moon and advise those damn Ducklings to waddle on out of here. 50 SAD CHAIRS is the children’s book hit of the year! Jam packed with such perennial kid-faves as “#08 Prolapse” and “#23 Soixante Neuf,” there’s little need for a slinky, Wii, nor Froebel Block set to occupy the little one’s time.
My wife and I gifted this to some close friends of ours who once dwelled within the well-represented Tower Grove neighborhood. Eliciting a mere shrug, none of us predicted this might evolve into a household favorite amongst their two and four year old boys. They can’t get enough. The two year old especially likes “#13 Judy on a Binge,” as do all of us (of course, I find myself personally engaged with “#16 Smoke Break”).
I give it Five Good ”Read” stars and highly recommend that you rush out and order yours today – it’s certainly the Tickle-Me-Beany-Cabbage-Patch-Baby of the year!
Update 2021 I've been having trouble getting back into reading on the bus these days (mask + glasses do not equal easy reading), but something like this is perfect for easing back into it. Still a perfect delight!
Original review 2/2019 That list of "they published a book on what?" continues to pay off handsomely. This was a clever, quirky delight. Some of my St. Louis peeps might also find it particularly amusing as that's where the photos were taken.
I'm feeling inspired to make one set solely in my library though I'd be tempted to include tables too...
1) Can't wait to get at this one. I hope it is as good at the book about long lost grocery lists. Currently fighting the urger to add Bill as my "Friend".
50 photos... of sad chairs. You get what you pay for.
It's a good concept. They're good photos. They have evocative captions which give these sad chairs a sort of anthropomorphizing dignity.
The one drawback: this is a tiny goddamn book. It's like 3-4" square. The promo website has example pages from the book which are larger, even on this tiny laptop screen, than the actual physical book.
Four stars mostly because it skewed my grading curve to give a tiny book of photos like this five, but it's thoroughly delightful and deliciously well done...and these poor chairs have far more personality than many a novel protagonist. (Just sayin'.)