Made by the same people who created ReadyMade magazine, this is a book with several projects divided into sections according to the main material used to make them (Metal, Fabric, Plastic, Wood, Paper). Each section has an introduction with some history of the material and its use to mankind followed by projects and some small articles sort of related to the material (The fabric section devotes some pages to "fabrication" - telling lies, storytelling. The metal section tells you about "mettle" and how to face your fears. Plastic section talks about credit cards and plastic surgery.) Its interesting, but I think they focussed more on the subject of reusing materials, which is not a bad thing, but they lost out on practicality (none of the projects were particularly useful). I think a book on "how to make everything" should really have been divided according to things people would want to MAKE. While the little articles were cute and informative, they didn't really have anything to do with reuse. I think the writers tried so hard to make this book appeal to a younger audience and to make it fun that it became more like a magazine that you could flip through in an hour than an actual reference book you would want to keep and spend $25.00 on. They even suggest cutting the hard cover of the book to make picture frames out of. Buy a hardcover book just to cut it apart?! That's when you are trying too hard and its getting ridiculous. That's not exactly a good use of resources Readymade. And I have a ruler anyway so I won't be using the spine of this book. I can just imagine people brainstorming about making the book useful and be designed to be something else other than a book and they took every single idea presented. Maybe that sounded good in theory but in practice I think it fell flat. I prefer the magazine over this book. This book isn't more than an extended issue of Readymade. I was expecting more.

Share/Like this Review?