For our second (and my first!) Book of the Week, I’ve got a selection unusual for me not only for the genre and topic, but also the format. Introducing Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close written by Hannah Carlson and narrated by Stephanie Cannon… yeah, I read this as an audiobook…

I first discovered Pockets through Libro.fm (which I use instead of that other audiobook service because you can link your Libro account to an indie bookstore of your choice and support them financially with your audiobook purchases, but that’s a whole other post we’re going to need to write…). And once I started listening, it was surprisingly hard to stop.

This book delivers a fascinating deep dive into the 500 year history of pockets… and the lack of them… and in so doing touches on not only fashion but sexuality, gender inequality, political unrest, class conflict, and the size of handguns. With Stephanie Cannon’s voice ideally suited to delivering Hannah Carlson’s captivating style of storytelling, Pockets turned into an unexpected non-fiction binge listen. And the audiobook edition even came with a 143-page pdf of images, illustrations, and references from the print book, to follow along visually as I listened.

Although already somewhat aware of the complicated and gendered history of pockets, reading Pockets gave me a whole new understanding of just how much can be hidden within such a simple and often overlooked bit of fabric.

Happy Listening and/or Reading!

– Winston