Book Review for ( Found & Found 2 )

I first became familiar with Found when I flipped through my mom's copy of the first book. She had heard about the book from some local radio station. At first the basic premise of the book didn't sound too intriguing. It sounded like a book full of trash... Essentially, that is what Found is, but trash that tells stories. Love letters, photos, shopping lists, homework (one kid handed in a report on a certain part of the male anatomy) etc. Some finds are funny. Some tragic. Some heartwarming. Think of the finds as short stories, sometimes consisting of only a few words. Or better yet, windows into the lives of others. This is one of those books that is fun to just pick up and flip through making it a perfect "coffee table" book. I took the first Found book to work a few years ago and was constantly lending it to people (or rather leaving it around while people couldn't help but be intrigued) who would soon be showing me their favorite finds. After reading this book you will never look at trash the same way again. I constantly scan the streets in search of my own finds worthy of Found Magazine. So far the most interesting thing I've found is a name tag that says "Pastor John Issac's " I wore it around work for awhile as a joke before it broke and another card behind the one that said "Pastor John" spilled out. It said "Elizabeth Jensen . Why did Pastor John have Elizabeth Jensen's name tag? Duel-Identities perhaps? You make up the story. The same goes with many of the finds in this book.

For those of you who might find the first Found book or this second one offensive in its content -- guess what? -- life is offensive. And for that matter, life is also often tragic, poignant, ironic, hysterically funny, random, and sometimes all of these things at once... the "Found" books and the magazines reflect all of these aspects of everyday life. That's what makes it so remarkable. Indeed, how many books can cause you to giggle and feel emotionally vulnerable within two pages? This work by Davy Rothbart, co-editor Jason Bitner, and all the Found crew deserves praise because this is a cross-section of humanity stripped down to its beautiful bare essentials. If, several thousand years from now, (android? zombie?) archaeologists study our current century, they might go through our trash. Think of "Found" as giving them a head start.

I highly recommend purchasing both FOUND and FOUND II.