James Ward’s Adventures in Stationery (& Other Boring Things)

One of my favorite things to do as a child was to go to the stationery store with my dad when he bought new pens. He was a lawyer clinging to the stone-age practice of writing every single thing by hand, and so was very particular about pens. Today he is still a lawyer, but now he uses a computer. Although we haven’t been back to that stationery store in years, I still remember the thrill of walking through the door, and knowing that a rainbow of pens, markers, and pencils awaited me – some sparkly, some scented, some with clicky things on top that let you change the color.

Plenty of people took notes in blue ink or even green, but how many people had a pen that wrote in lines of maroon? Oh how my classmates would gaze with envy upon my purple glitter gel pen, my dolphin-shaped eraser, my floral-print paperclips!

If anyone could understand my appreciation for these simple things, it would be James Ward. His first book, Adventures in Stationery, explores your desk drawers like no book has done before. It is a collection of facts and anecdotes, as well as a journey through the history and development of stationery objects. Ward’s book confers some of the fame and notoriety that the inventors of such objects as paperclips and highlighters deserve but have never been given. There is something very sweet and satisfying about a book that makes you laugh while it educates you, and Adventures in Stationery is just this sort of book.

Ward likens his obsession with stationery to the devotion of sports fans who can name every player that was on a team the year they won the championship, or a Beatles fan who can tell you which Beatle played which instrument on which album. Put it that way, and an obsession with stationery makes perfect sense.

Although Adventures in Stationery is his first book, Ward has been writing for years on his blog I Like Boring Things. If you’d like a taste of Ward’s writing style but fear it may be boring, allow me to recommend Mash as a entry point. He is also the founder of A Boring Conference, which is a “one-day celebration of the mundane, the ordinary, the obvious, and the overlooked” held annually. The very existence of this conference – along with the fact that Boring IV, held in May this year, was sold out – suggests that I am not alone in my love of stationery and similarly “boring” things.

Past topics addressed at the Boring Conference have been toast, bar codes, and German film titles. The trick is, though the topic may be boring, the content is not. Speakers at the Boring Conference have passion and a deep desire to share it with their audience, which is really all a gripping speech requires in my experience.