The subject of this book has been around for several millennia, and yet my partner's daughter has been employed for several years designing it, or them. It's something I use for about 200 days of every year, at a guess (well, I have my self-diagnosed over-active eccrine glands and other people to think about) – which clearly puts me at the opposite end of the scale to well-known mass-murderer of women, Ted Bundy, who was into stealing credit cards to fund his desire of having a fresh pair every single day. On which subject, the amount of them we create every year could stack to the freaking moon and more. Some idiots buy more than six pairs a year, apparently, which is plain stupid. I'm talking, as you can tell, of the humble sock.
| Sock (Object Lessons) by Kim Adrian | |
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| Category: Popular Science | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A book that can encapsulate the problems of this series, but one also that serves to entertain in its erudite approach to yet another unexpected subject. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 140 | Date: September 2017 |
| Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781501315060 | |
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But the thing is that its entry into this series proves it to not be humble at all. Take the smallest academic books, and fill them with history, science – and, commonly, too much autobiography – and you get this Object Lessons series, which has certainly served to fill many a gap on an academic shelf. Just as the author here finds gaps in the history of socks, so nobody knows when we really started wearing them – that is, socks in the shape of formed fabric for the feet, to be worn between said flesh and the shoe, as opposed to jumbles of felt or straw, or perhaps soft cushioning drapes without the shoe – so there are very few books on this specific subject to act as competitors. So does this make for a valuable corrective to that?
Well, yes and no. The first chapter is superlative, telling me more than I thought to find interesting about socks. Here is science about the foot, the history of the footwear we put on it (and what the foot is like due to us uniquely deciding to be fully bipedal), and here is Queen Elizabeth I curtailing the industrial revolution by a couple of centuries for interventionist economic purposes. Yes, you get so much in these socks they might as well be the stereotypical Christmas stocking.
But then… The second chapter, Socks and desire, had a struggle to sell itself to me, what with its concern about foot fetishism (sorry – it's partialism, apparently) and such adult approaches to the subject. I have to go on record however to say I was completely sold, and this was again much more entertaining, erudite and up-my-street than I had any right to expect. But the final third shot the book in the foot (pun intended). It offered little even related to the sock, and in itemising the 'fast fashion' idea, without calling anyone subservient to it an outright c***, was all of depressing, unnecessary, wasteful and off-topic. It did touch on darning and even knitting a full sock – the author can knock out a lovely jumper no problem, but has only ever knitted one sock singular for all her efforts and best intentions. But it was too diffuse. It was the toe end of the foot – too gappy and whiffy, and too much of a shame to have left the meat behind.
That's a little indicative of this whole series, which knocks out six or seven titles per season regarding something you just never thought to find a whole book dedicated to (Shipping Containers, or silence, or cancerous tumours for crying out loud). I've found some eminently ditchable, but others have managed to match the definitive author with the definitive subject, and taught me lots about something I didn't even know I wanted to know about. Which is why, as often as I want to put a boot in to some titles in the series, I have the urge to return on the off-chance of brilliance. This entrant to the series doesn't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but it at least reaches polyester stocking status.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
Eye Chart (Object Lessons) by William Germano stands out from the most recent batch of entries to the series.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Sock (Object Lessons) by Kim Adrian at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Sock (Object Lessons) by Kim Adrian at Amazon.com.
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