Quietish

I arrived early to SitNStitch last night as usual and made my routine swoop around the magazine and New Release racks while I waited for my Jalepeno-Stuffed Pretzel to get done.

As you probably know, I have enough unread books on my bookshelf and/or on my to-read list and don’t particularly need to add anything to them at the moment. Nor am I one to buy a book I had never previously heard of on a whim. Not that I don’t enjoy a nice random book here and there; I just rarely have time to partake in such a way.

That said, I found this book yesterday, read the back, skimmed 1/2 way through, and took it home:

Journal
The Short Life and Mysterious Death of Amy Zoe Mason
Found by Kristine Atkinson and Joyce Atkinson

This book will appeal to many of my arty friends for the same reason it did me. The authors have chosen to tell this story in the format of an art journal. The pages inside are all scans of the pages from an altered book. The premise is that they found this altered book/journal inside of a desk that they picked up at a thrift store. They read the journal and then did some more research afterwards to find out what happened to the artist who created it.

As you can tell from the subtitle, Journal is a bit of a mystery. I really enjoyed reading it and, pushing the idea that something bad would happen to the back of my mind, simply focused on the story the actual scrapbook was telling me and tried not to let the foreknowledge spoil it. If you intend to read this book, I would recommend doing the same. Take in the artwork and the text, and let that do the storytelling. Then you can read more by looking at the authors’ website: Amy Zoe Mason