Symbol Soup (9 volume boxed set)

Rating:
Summary: -
Review: For sixty dollars, I was expecting much more than what I received. Maybe I was just reading the editorial review wrong, but I assumed the collection would be more images than text, and if that's what you're looking for, I recommend you don't buy this collection.

I only found one of the books mildly entertaining, the rest will probably end up in the trash before the end of the week. One of the books was an actual calender, which I guess is useful, but not exactly what I was looking to buy for sixty dollars.

The editorial review also says something about overdesign. Now if you consider overdesign to mean a big plain silver heart on a red background or a book full of nothing but a word spread between every two pages in different colors and plain fonts as "overdesign" then so be it. But I sure don't.

Overall, I'm glad I now own that one book in the collection, but if I had to do it over again, I would keep my sixty dollars to buy on something else.

Rating:
Summary: One cup of heterodoxy and salt to taste
Review: Many times it's very difficult to find signs of new forms of expression. Books have been, for a long long time now, one of the most effectively mirrors of the present. The present now, the present 10 years ago, the present 100 years ago or the present in the future. Symbol Soup somehow manages to represent the whole state of this era. The different components that make this a totally is the fusion of lot's of little details, almost everyone being as isolated and dependent from the other as the next one.

To say this book is a collage of broken mirrors is very poor. It's a mirror with mirrors inside, and mirrors inside the mirrors inside the mirrors. But the difficulty remains in what level of the book we should focus. Well, this is the best part, there are so many levels that you can approach to the book having in mind, from a disclose idea of total vacuum to having the certainty that there is something beyond waking up every morning in the same bed with the same sheets.

This is not a book with answers. NO ANSWERS. At least for me. What I found here, and loved, is having the sensation of opening the map of now. I have to close my eyes, they hurt when I look at it. And I like it. It's not like I'm some kind of masochist. And it's not the colors (uf! the colors!) and the images (essential on this book), that make my retina feel like a solar panel. Besides the colors it's the content. The way they fly across different topics of this time, it really makes you turn your head around and question everything. That's it. A lot of questions with no answers. But interesting questions. And what's even more interesting is finding the answers You give to them.