Stickers is essentially a memoir constructed of a series of essays all revolving around 20 stickers. The author, Henry Hoke, uses each of the 20 stickers to springboard into a story or memory from his past. As a concept this really intrigued me, I was definitely one of those kids who was obsessed with collecting stickers.
Overall it was an interesting read that gave a good insight into the authors upbringing but it didn't set my world on fire. There were some interesting stories but some others felt repetitive and rambling.

I found this to be a very interesting premise, though some stories hit much harder than others. Where some stories were very great and entertaining to me, others fell flat/were not to my enjoyment. Overall, this book feels inconsistent: some great works and some... not so great.

Sticker is a collection of short vignettes and reminiscences by Henry Hoke of growing up in Charlottesville Va in the 90s related through the lens of 20 different stickers. Due out 13th Jan 2022 from Bloomsbury Academic, it's 164 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

This is one of a series of books on everyday items called "Object Lessons" which team writers' observations and experiences with material foci: stickers, bookshelves, bulletproof vest, traffic, TVs, and trees to give a few examples.

There were some a-ha moments in the course of reading. I was previously unaware where Mr. Hoke grew up (Charlottesville) and he ties in the recent infamy and cultural upheaval through his own observations and the responses he's garnered from folks who find out that he's from Charlottesville. He's arranged the responses chronologically from 1998-2018 with grim results.

I have enjoyed a number of the books in this series. It's erudite and thought provoking. This one was a worthwhile addition.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Thank you to Bloomsbury academic and NetGalley for this arc of Sticker by Henry Hoke in exchange for an honest review. the whole premise of this book being a memoir told through different stickers, particularly the experiences someone goes through with said stickers, is an extremely interesting one. unfortunately for me, this just fell flat. while some of the stories drew me in and kept me going, for the most part, I felt disconnected and uninspired.

The format of this memoir was very interesting. Henry shares his story through 20 different stickers and how each one has defined certain events or time periods in his life. While I think this format was incredibly interesting, the story felt disjointed and hard to follow at times. I don't feel like I was able to get a firm understanding of Henry's journey.

This is a fun little book about the origin of certain stickers, like the Mr. Yuck that we all put on our poisonous chemicals in the hope that it would deter kids from drinking them. This is a book of short essays about different stickers and how they affect our lives.

The whole concept behind “Sticker” was quite compelling!

It’s so interesting how the author is tells us about his life through stickers. What I found even more interesting, was how the author explores difficult themes or remembers some of his most memorable moments and experiences through stickers, which I expected would be done in a lighthearted way, but instead does so in a way that is more thought-provoking than anything else.

The experiences the author recalls, although very personal, can be identified as common by many readers, and thus, allowing them to reflect on their own experiences. The same with sticker, as I found myself think about the stickers that have (or can) define some moments in my life.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Academic for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

A story told through an object—it’s a neat idea. Henry Hoke tells the story of his life through memorable stickers, from Mr Yuk to gold stars to blueberry scratch and sniff. I really wanted to like this and it isn’t that I didn’t *like* it, I just didn’t…like it.
I would have liked to actually learn something about the history of stickers, which I didn’t. Instead this is about growing up queer, and it’s a meditation on Charlottesville. Charlottesville, VA, is now known as the FIRST site where a Nazi ran down a peaceful protestor (sadly other drivers have done the same at sun sequent protests). Charlottesville’s racist history plays a large role in the book, and I appreciated each section, but they didn’t hang together well. I am a quick reader usually, but I had to force myself to pick this one up and so it took almost 2 months for me to read it.
I would read this if you really like experimental memoir or are from Charlottesville. Otherwise I think you can find better.

A short, wide-wheeling meditation on the material culture of queerness and queer childhood in particular, Sticker is full of surprises and thought-provoking ideas. I love the approach to a vast topic through the lens of something small, and Sticker succeeds brilliantly at it.

I am looking forward to read more and more short stories collection. This one was not was I was expected, mainly because some stories were not my taste. I managed to enjoy 2 or 3 stories but I can not say that I recommend this book.

This book was a lot of fun to read. It’s brilliantly written, witty, and entertaining for such a short book of just over 100 pages.

The concept of writing a memoir led by the various stickers throughout your life ended up being really thoughtful - inducing memories and emotions from my life as well.

The book also touched upon important concepts such as race, slavery, white supremacy, and the concept of “freedom.” It isn’t a political book but highlights how real life has problems that are larger than us all effect who we become, where we live, and what we fight for.

Sticker is a a sort of memoir told in a series of snapshots, each related to a particular sticker. From bumper stickers to warning labels, each sticker reveals a bit more of Hoke's experience growing up in Charlottesville before the chaos of racial riots in 2017. He deals with disability, questions his sexuality, tests out how to be a good friend, and finds his dream job while watching the world divide around him.

For most of this book, I felt like I was looking at a complex piece of modern art. There are many things it could represent, but I was unsure which ones the author intended. Toward the end, it arrives on a more distinct conclusion regarding Hoke's own sympathies as a liberal-minded individual who grew up in the South, but between and before that, it spends a lot of time giving context and offering anecdotes that are never quite funny. It has too much coarse language for me to be able to use it in a class for those under 18. However it holds distinct possibilities as a way to introduce students to writing their own memoirs and gives a foundation for explaining how to separate oneself from the culture in which one has grown up.

Part of a series of books that examine the ordinary life of everyday things, Sticker (Object Lessons) is so much more than I expected. Sticker is a memoir told in stickers. For those of us who grew up in the 80's and 90's, there are some especially fun throwbacks. Do you remember stickers from your childhood? What about the constellation stickers that were meant to go on a bedroom ceiling and mimic the night sky? What about the fruit sticker on the Chiquita brand banana? Did you ever buy a CD that came with the Parental Advisory sticker on the front? I bet most of you haven't given much thought to these stickers in quite some time. I hadn't either! This slim volume contains multitudes pulled from the every day banality of stickers and brings meaning into them in a unique way. Each sticker evokes a memory in the author, from something simple, like a sticker meant to signal harmful chemicals on household cleaners, to something meaningful like the 'HH' sticker that is most likely meant to represent a town, but instead, under the context of a white supremacist rally that the author is protesting, comes to mean "Heil Hitler". I was drawn in by the stories and the writing style. This book is a fast read, with a big punch.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the E-ARC.

An interesting take on the format of memoir, both personal and universal. Centring moments of personal and public memory onto stickers gives a particularly interesting reference point and allows for a common thread to be woven throughout the book. Meaning it all feels contacted despite its non linear approach. A particular highlight was the continual references to scratch and sniff which created some especially poetic moments.

This series of vignettes both gave me a sense of Charlottesville (i loved the mix of perspectives from childhood and adulthood) and built a picture of Hoke's life, especially coming of age as a queer kid. It was fun and easy to read and pulled me along, but with these moments of tenderness punctuating the book. I don't always like essay collections, but this felt like a mosaic of a memoir.

A very different perspective for a memoir! I’m on the fence whether I liked said difference, but it was very interesting.

Object Lessons is my favorite new series. Every one of them that I've read has been awesome, and I'm definitely looking forward to reading more!

I've read and reviewed quite a few Object Lessons books by now, and my usual refrain is the ones that take a more individual path, a personal thesis or use the object to jump off and talk about greater trends in society have been my favourite. That said, there is a point when it drifts into memoir or autobiography where they don't work so well. Telling the story of stickers through a personal interaction of lots of kinds of stickers would normally work for me. Telling the story of someone life through their interaction with stickers is a lot less interesting, and not really what I think the books should be. But just in case you weren't sure about it, Henry Hoke - in his introduction (which as is typical for this book is actually a third of the way through) - makes his position of the history of stickers quite clear: "If you really care about the history of adhesive labels, just go on the internet." This I feel breaks a minor compact with the reader who has bought an Object Lessons book called Sticker. (I you do google history of adhesive label you get a solid but not very deep Wikipedia page, and a few in-house histories which appear to strongly overestimate the importance of Avery in their development).

I suppose none of this would really matter if I had engaged with the memoir around it, but unfortunately that drifted into what felt like a not exceptionally interesting bit of self-memorialising. There are interesting points drawn out, being from Charlottesville, Virginia and its recent history of racist acts (and longer history) looms large. There's some solid coming of age stuff, but it all felt a little sufficed with the sense of "the writer who made it out", and by the way here are some stickers I remember along the way.

It may also be that I reacted this way as I have a personal connection with the topic, in as much as I have a mild phobia of stickers, and find them physically and intellectually unpleasant. So I was interested if anything like that would come up, and the book gets by without even mentioning sticky residues and dramaged book and album covers (I will give him a pass on not knowing quite how revolting a slowly rotting half picked off sticker of Roger Moore dressed as a clown in Octopussy could be on a bathroom mirror). Still like Object Lessons, and accept that if I want them to be personal and experimental that there will be ones I don't like. And sadly this was the one.

The concept behind Henry Hoke’s Sticker is an interesting one. That a person’s life could be told from the vantage point of the stickers they encounter. It interested me enough that I decided to take a look at this arc provided by NetGalley.

I have to say I was less than impressed though. The various essays are from different time periods and are incredibly varying lengths. Some essays are a couple of pages well others go on for around ten pages. There does not seem to be any continuity. Though there seems to be a slight progression in time the only thing that ties all twenty essays together is this idea of the sticker, specifically the idea of stretch and sniff stickers and how different things would smell if they were scratch and sniff stickers.

Those some of the stories are ones that I can imagine will stick in my mind for a while, I didn’t find anything super compelling about what Hoke had to say. I was less than impressed. Admittedly, each reader is different and perhaps other readers will be drawn in to this memoiresque series of essays. It just wasn’t for me.

With a cute cover and a clever theme, Sticker is a collection of essays examining different events in Hoke's life in Charlottesville, Virginia. I liked these essays, but I wished they had been presented in less haphazard way. I guess I was expecting them to built to some sort of logical conclusion, which never happened. All in all, a good read.