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There are times of the week where I simply cannot be without lists. I use them for shopping, for basic errands, or for simply organising thoughts. They provide a sense of security, or safety, or could even be part of the creative process – a means for brainstorming, documenting ideas or just a way for neatly tying strings of any kind of information together.
Faithfully compiled by Shaun Usher, Lists of Note feels like an indulgence even as you hold it. A gigantic big hardcover thing, it is large, luxurious and lengthy at 318 pages and complete with colour illustrations and 125 of the most captivating lists you could ever hope to read. In the introduction, Usher states that life is chaotic – without the reliance on lists of some kind the world would be muddled and overflowing. He suggests that we’re fearful of the unknown, and possess a need to assign things into groups, and give them labels. Sometimes we like to feel important, so we tend to encourage our inner critic and judge, by ranking things from best to worst, biggest to smallest and so on. Other times we appreciate the convenience of a list if we might just like to work with something that’s collective and easily digestible. Eradicating procrastination, lists essentially bring something manageable to the picture.
One of the best things about this publication is that you can read it just about any way you wish. You might like to approach it from start to finish like a traditional book (unexciting, I probably wouldn’t recommend it), or you could instead open up at a random page; read then flick to the next, or jump a few pages in-between. There are usually about two to three pages per list (including a couple of illustrations) and it’s difficult not to just become engrossed in the book for an hour or several.
The first list in the book is a few scribbles in the form of a to-do list, by the legendary singer-songwriter Johnny Cash. We can see traces of a kind of humour seeping through here as he scrawled so decisively “cough,” “pee”, “eat” “not eat too much” and even “kiss June” and directly afterwards “not kiss anyone else.” Personal accounts of celebrities like this are all throughout the pages – and who doesn’t like peeping into the elusive lives of the rich and famous? We realise that they really are just human beings of course – fallible, messy and still fumbling like the best of us.
Political excitement, laziness, remorse and milk fever may sound like completely far-fetched, if not amusing reasons to be admitted into a mental hospital. But in 1889, the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane in Weston admitted patients for care due to these symptoms, and plenty more obtuse ones like seduction, deranged masturbation and feebleness of intellect.
Forward about thirty or forty years (or back a hundred and thirty pages) and we have The Anti-Flirt Club – an organisation established by young women and girls embarrassed by men in automobiles and on street corners. A founder of the group, Alice Reighly suggested helpfully in 1926 for women to avoid the impish attention of inquiring men they need not smile at flirtatious strangers, nor fall for the slick, dandified cake eater – ‘the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard.’ Back a hundred years again, and The Ladies Pocket Magazine catered to young ladies of the 1920’s, and contained guides on typical etiquette and fashion. Some of them are a bit odd, like refraining from languishing if in possession of blue eyes, and sowing tapestry if predisposed to feeling clumsy. But undeniably still helpful, if not in a somewhat peculiar way.
From Da Vinci’s early musings on human anatomy to Ghandi’s seven social sins, from the personal dictionary of Nick Cave to Disney’s list of 50 dwarf names (yes, there weren’t just seven at all, the ones we are now so familiar with were cherry picked from a not-so-shortlist!) Letters of Note is something special and insightful for the bookcase – a stimulating, funny and educational exploration into various aspects of humankind in the form of lists.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Lists of Note
Shaun Usher
ISBN: 978-0-9925371-0-4
Published by Canongate Books Ltd
