Everything Else is Bric-a-Brac: Notes on Home

by Akiko Busch, Aurore de La Morinerie (Illustrator)

A collection of 60 short prose pieces by best-selling author and design critic Akiko Busch that reflect, in her classic style of observation, on the human condition and offer insights on family, domestic space, and a changing environment. Beautifully illustrated with 20 pieces of watercolor art, this collection makes an inspirational gift.
 
In Everything Else Is Bric-a-Brac, Akiko Busch explores place, memory, and the ambiguities of domestic life. At once thought-provoking, humorous, and meditative, these essays illuminate the emotional resonance of inanimate things; ideas of placement and displacement; the simultaneous frailty and tenacity of human recollection; the beauty of usefulness and uselessness alike; and how we do—and don't—find our place in things.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays

148 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 13, 2022

About the author

Akiko Busch has written about design and culture since 1979. She is the author of Geography of Home: Writings on Where We Live and The Uncommon Life of Common Objects: Essays on Design an the Everyday. Her most recent book of essays, Nine Ways to Cross a River, a collection of essays about swimming across American Rivers, was published in 2007 by Bloomsbury/USA. She was a contributing editor at Metropolis magazine for 20 years. Her essays have appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues, and she has written articles for Architectural Record, Elle, Home, House & Garden, Metropolitan Home, London Financial Times, The New York Times, Traditional Home, Travel & Leisure and Wallpaper*, among other publications. In Fall, 2005 she served as a Richard Koopman Distinguished Chair for the Visual Arts at the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford. She has lectured widely on architecture and design and has appeared on public radio in the U.S. and Canada. Currently, she is a regular contributor to The New York Times Sunday regional section.

Reviews

[Nils · Rating 2 out of 5]

Looks pretty and the occasional watercolour illustrations are nice. Would a good piece for a small coffee table. But the content isn’t really inspiring or engaging, bar one or two of them pieces. There’s a bit too much brand-name-dropping, and sort-of-well-known name-checking. And although the undoubtedly well-meaning author wants to convey to us the meaning of her considered relationship with her domestic physical surroundings, too often I ended up just not caring. Some of it is too trivial, some of it too personal, some of it too much suffused with only half-concealed satisfaction about how perfect the home she has created is. We don’t care. It might resonate better with US audiences who feel similarly deeply pleased with themselves and the life they have created for themselves but it left me desperate for a little edge, a little significance, a little more meaning.

[Ingrid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thinking about my childhood home and the space I live in now. Short pieces on home.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the single-two page prose. It made a nice pick-up read when I wanted some little tidbits of life, home and connection to ponder. I liked the feeling of having short stories that appear and disappear and leave a thread for the reader to mull over.

[Candy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Made me remember my childhood home...

[Katina · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice to pick up and then put down