A love story told in the form of an auction catalog. 
Auction catalogs can tell you a lot about a person -- their passions and vanities, peccadilloes and aesthetics; their flush years and lean. Think of the collections of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Truman Capote, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. 
In Leanne Shapton's marvelously inventive and invented auction catalog, the 325 lots up for auction are what remain from the relationship between Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris (who aren't real people, but might as well be). Through photographs of the couple's personal effects -- the usual auction items (jewelry, fine art, and rare furniture) and the seemingly worthless (pajamas, Post-it notes, worn paperbacks) -- the story of a failed love affair vividly (and cleverly) emerges. From first meeting to final separation, the progress and rituals of intimacy are revealed through the couple's accumulated relics and memorabilia. And a love story, in all its tenderness and struggle, emerges from the evidence that has been left behind, laid out for us to appraise and appreciate. 
In an earlier work, Was She Pretty?, Shapton, a talented artist and illustrator, subtly explored the seemingly simple yet powerfully complicated nature of sexual jealousy. In Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris―a very different yet equally original book―she invites us to contemplate what is truly valuable, and to consider the art we make of our private lives.

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry

Arts & Photography

Shapton, Leanne

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Sarah Crichton Books

A SINGULAR EXPLORATION OF MODERN LOVE AND ALL ITS DEMONS, IN WORDS AND DRAWINGS
In this brilliant gem of a book, artist/writer Leanne Shapton weaves together a voyeuristic tale of love and life through epigrammatic vignettes and sleek line drawings. Entire relationships are encapsulated in a few, stingingly perfect lines: "Colleen was Walter's ex-girlfriend from med school. She loved to dance with men at weddings." Pricking our insecurities, Shapton introduces us to Kim, whose ex "kept a drawerful of love letters in a kitchen drawer . . . She would stare at it while she cooked." And Ben's ex, "a physiotherapist for the U.S. men's and women's Olympic swim teams. She wore small white shorts year-round."
Fascinated by her own jealousy, Shapton interviewed acquaintances about their anxieties and peccadilloes, and the result is a book of surpassing originality: one of those unusual books that comes along to delight us all, like An Exaltation of Larks or Love, Loss, and What I Wore or Griffin and Sabine. Was She Pretty? can also share the shelf with the work of the legendary William Steig, whose early, psychologically revealing work inspired Shapton. An unflinching observer of human behavior, she invites us to peer into the hearts and minds of her characters―while reminding us that we shouldn't be surprised if we see ourselves staring right back.

Was She Pretty?

Parenting & Relationships

Winner of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award, Autobiography Swimming Studies is a brilliantly original, meditative memoir that explores the worlds of competitive and recreational swimming. From her training for the Olympic trials as a teenager to enjoying pools and beaches around the world as an adult, Leanne Shapton offers a fascinating glimpse into the private, often solitary, realm of swimming. Her spare and elegant writing reveals an intimate narrative of suburban adolescence, spent underwater in a discipline that continues to inspire Shapton’s work as an artist and author. Her illustrations throughout the book offer an intuitive perspective on the landscapes and imagery of the sport. Shapton’s emphasis is on the smaller moments of athletic pursuit rather than its triumphs. For the accomplished athlete, aspiring amateur, or habitual practicer, this remarkable work of written and visual sketches propels the reader through a beautifully personal and universally appealing exercise in reflection.

Swimming Studies

Sports & Outdoors

Biographies

Blue Rider Press

"Reading [Guestbook] feels akin to walking through an art exhibit, each piece linked in ways that are ineffable but clear. . . yearning, like a ghost, lingers long after the stories are done." --NPR One of our most imaginative writers and artists explores the visitations that haunt us in the midst of life, and reinvents the very way we narrate experience. A tennis prodigy collapses after his wins, crediting them to an invisible, not entirely benevolent presence. A series of ghosts appear at their former bedsides, some distraught, some fascinated, to witness their unfamiliar occupants. A woman returns from a visit to Alcatraz with an uncomfortable feeling. The spirit of a prisoner has attached himself to you, a friend tells her. He sensed the sympathy you had for those men. In more than two dozen stories and vignettes, accompanied by an evocative curiosity cabinet of artifacts and images, Guestbook beckons us through the glimmering, unsettling evidence that marks our paths in life.

Guestbook: Ghost Stories

History & Criticism

Riverhead Books

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Women in Clothes is a book unlike any other. It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities—famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old—on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives. It began with a survey. The editors composed a list of more than fifty questions designed to prompt women to think more deeply about their personal style. Writers, activists, and artists including Cindy Sherman, Kim Gordon, Kalpona Akter, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Tavi Gevinson, Miranda July, Roxane Gay, Lena Dunham, and Molly Ringwald answered these questions with photographs, interviews, personal testimonies, and illustrations. Even our most basic clothing choices can give us confidence, show the connection between our appearance and our habits of mind, express our values and our politics, bond us with our friends, or function as armor or disguise. They are the tools we use to reinvent ourselves and to transform how others see us. Women in Clothes embraces the complexity of women’s style decisions, revealing the sometimes funny, sometimes strange, always thoughtful impulses that influence our daily ritual of getting dressed.

Women in Clothes

Heti, Sheila

JULAVITS, Heidi

Graphic Design

Swimming Studies is a collection of autobiographical sketches that explore the worlds of competitive and recreational swimming. From her training for the Olympic trials as a teenager, to meditative swims in pools and oceans as an adult, Leanne Shapton contemplates the sport that has shaped her life. Her spare and elegant writing reveals an intimate narrative of suburban adolescence, spent underwater in a discipline that continues to inspire Shapton's work as an artist and author, while her illustrations offer a new perspective on the landscapes and imagery of swimming. Shapton emphasizes the private, often solitary moments of athletic pursuit rather than its triumphs. This remarkable work of written and visual pieces propels the reader through a beautifully personal exercise in reflection.

Lenore Doolan, a food writer for the New York Times, meets Harold Morris, a photographer, at a halloween party in 2002. He is dressed as Harry Houdini. In Leanne Shapton's marvellously inventive and invented auction catalogue, the 325 lots up for auction are what remain from the relationship between Lenore and Harold (who aren't real people, but might as well be). Through photographs of the couple's personal effects-the usual auction items (jewellery, fine art, and rare furniture) and the seemingly worthless (pyjamas, Post-it notes, worn paperbacks)-the story of a failed love affair vividly and cleverly emerges. From first meeting to final separation, the progress and rituals of intimacy are revealed through the couple's accumulated relics and memorabilia. And a love story, in all its tenderness and struggle, emerges from the evidence that has been left behind, laid out for us to appraise and appreciate. In Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris Leanne Shapton invites us to contemplate what is truly valuable, and to consider the art we make of our private lives.

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris: Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Bloomsbury Paperbacks

An ode to self-expression and personal style, featuring more than 225 contributors, edited by three critically acclaimed authors Women in Clothes is a book unlike any other. It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities-famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old-on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives. It began with a survey. The editors composed a list of more than fifty questions designed to prompt women to think more deeply about their personal style. Writers, activists, and artists including Cindy Sherman, Kim Gordon, Kalpona Akter, Roxane Gay, Lena Dunham, and Molly Ringwald answered these questions with interviews, personal testimonies, photographs, and illustrations. Even our most basic clothing choices can give us confidence, show the connection between our appearance and our habits of mind, express our values and our politics, bond us with our friends, or function as armor or disguise. They are the tools we use to reinvent ourselves and to transform how others see us. Women in Clothes embraces the complexity of women's style decisions, revealing the sometimes funny, sometimes strange, always thoughtful impulses that influence our daily ritual of getting dressed.

Others

Blackstone Audiobooks

A visual essay, a poem, a study of Princess Diana, image, celebrity, and identity.\nArtist and writer Leanne Shapton has painted Princess Diana from the hundreds of photographs of her getting out of cars, examining her iconography and meaning in gesture and form.\nIn Cars: On Diana is about photography, fidelity, facsimile, and where to hold the beheld. It is also an obsessive and loving collection of studies, abstracted and haunting.\n“Leanne Shapton is one of the most broadly creative and gifted people at work today; a true artist, both visual and verbal.” —David Rakoff\n“A strange and evocative poem, nesting in a sequence of paintings, both the art and the words examining Diana having her photograph taken getting out of cars - each path taking us inevitably to the final car ride. Like a gentler, kinder, J. G. Ballard, Leanne takes us on a journey into cars and iconography and the spirit of ecstasy.” —Neil Gaiman\n“Shapton is a wonder. By restricting herself to the narrowest of subject matters she has made something utterly new. Her essay-poem on Diana and cars is as elegant and resonant as her pictures. A fascinating, remarkable, beautiful book.” —Nick Laird\n“Through murk and blur, Shapton sucks the color from the too-familiar shapes and surfaces photographic images yield. She amplifies the overexposed surfaces we use to claim ownership of self and others; embedding us in photography’s vanishing games.” —Taryn Simon\n“In Cars is both a silent movie/flipbook and an essay/poem. Its major theme is Diana, but it identifies something specific and uncanny and universal: the pathos of glamour the lack of sovereignty that’s encoded in our paparazzi images of celebrity women.” —Adam Thirlwell\n“Leanne Shapton writes with such curiosity ruefulness intelligence and grace.” —Sheila Heti

In Cars: On Diana (Short Books by Great Women Writers)

Individual Artists

Tablo Tales

A bold reinterpretation of a century-old book
While shopping in the used-book store the Monkey's Paw in Toronto, Leanne Shapton happened upon a 1956 edition of the government reference book The Native Trees of Canada, originally published in 1917 by the Canadian Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources. Most people might simply view the book as a dry cataloging of a banal subject; Shapton, however, saw beauty in the technical details and was inspired to create her own interpretation of The Native Trees of Canada. Shapton distills each image into its simplest form, using vivid colors in lush ink and house paint. She takes the otherwise complex objects of trees, pinecones, and seeds and strips them down into bold, almost abstract shapes and colors: the water birch is represented as two pulsating red bulbs contrasted against a gray backdrop; the eastern white pine is represented by a close-up of its cone against a radiant summer sky. 
The author of Was She Pretty? and Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry, Shapton puts forth yet another entirely new facet of her creative artistry.

The Native Trees of Canada (series test)

Drawn and Quarterly

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Shapton, Leanne. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Shapton, Leanne

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Shapton, Leanne. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry

Was She Pretty?

Swimming Studies

Guestbook: Ghost Stories

Women in Clothes

Swimming Studies

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris: Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry

Women in Clothes

In Cars: On Diana (Short Books by Great Women Writers)

The Native Trees of Canada (series test)