Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I have enjoyed reading many of the Object Lessons books in this series. The authors are generally not constrained on how they chose to write about the topic. Thus, the books vary in content and sometimes go far afield from what you may expect. This is the case for this book. The definition the author used for signature was widely encompassing. For myself it went a bit too far. The writing style was also one that I did not particularly enjoy. It felt overly academic when that was not necessary. While this one didn’t work for me as well as other titles in the series, it may work for others and I will continue to look forward to what comes next.

One of the things about this series is it never fails to surprise me. Based on the novella titles, you think you've got a good idea what to expect but the authors are pretty good at throwing a some surprise twists in there. Sometimes angles, concepts and ideas I would never have even considered.

Although missing some of the whimsy I've come to expect with this series, Signature, covers a wide variety of touch-points that makes for engaging reading. I wasn't a huge fan of the writing style. Often it read like a cross between a waffling memoir and a high school essay assignment, ranging from rambling to chunky information dumps. However, it wasn't too much of a distraction and I've got to give extra points for someone dedicated enough to their research task to get inked in the process. Respect.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Academic for the ARC.

Object Lessons published by Bloomsbury is a series of short and beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. It's one of my favourite series, and I'm always thrilled when there is a new release to be published.
⁠
Signature by Hunter Dukes is conceived as part cultural history, part travelogue that pursues the marks made by people and animals, revealing the stories hidden in their signatures. ⁠
⁠
Dukes addresses anthropological and sociological questions, such as why we sign our names, signature as both a presence and an absence, and historical signing practices. ⁠
⁠
For example, did you know that first detected "signatures", meaning handprints, predate Homo Sapiens? ⁠😲
⁠
The reader is taken on a journey from the Greek island of Syros, to interviewing an autograph collector in London (the same man being memorialised in a book by Zadie Smith), from a wedding in Moscow where guests sign the bride's body, to a San Franciscan tattoo parlour. ⁠
⁠
I found the subject utterly fascinating, although I'm not sure the short format was quite right for this book. There were dozens of references on each page, and the flow wasn't quite there. ⁠Nevertheless, it's a highly exciting read.

⁠Can't wait to see what's coming next in this series. 💛

Thanks to the publisher and #NetGalley for my advanced copy of #Signature.

One of the excellent things about this series is that the authors are given free rein to approach their subjects however they wish. However, this can sometimes mean that the book you read is not the book you were expecting.

This book was a bit of a curates egg for me - good in parts. I enjoyed the interview with the autograph collector, but it was over too soon in favour of some quasi-philosophical musings about some bloke the author had met on holiday which was only very tangentially related to the subject of signatures. There seemed a lot more about body tattoos than there was about written signatures, which I found strange.

To sum up: it’s worth a read, but you may not discover much about signatures along the way.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

Consider the autograph – a thing we all ought to have, and probably will have at least two of. Let me elaborate. One year my mother and I got the token annual contact from my distant brother, and were both astounded to see him, a man probably in his thirties, having changed his signature entirely at some point, to the extent that what he put on bank cheques was now authorised to look like the novel arrangement, which was much more like an ECG trace than some natural presentation of the letters in his name. OK, that change doesn't apply to you? Well, my acting colleague of zero national renown, fame or interest, always insisted that anybody in the public eye should have the one autograph his banks and lawyers knew, and that anything signed for fans, passing people or just kids happy to have been given an afternoon off proper school lessons to watch our show, should look entirely different. (I think he must be on to something – I know it's a time constraint as well, but all the illegible squirks pop stars, tennis players et al sharpie on to things fit the bill.) Never felt the need to have a public and private autograph? I guess you've never had to practice your new moniker when you've got married then – it's one of the first things you do. And if not, well then, go to the dentists and sign in on an iPad. You'll never get anything like what you sign with paper and pen. So you do have two autographs, like it or not. And that's before you've collected anyone else's.

That's a cod, introductory look at autographs, and this book does offer something like that, written much better than mine. But it also covers a whole lot more – to the extent it would be very hard pushed to find a general reader on board for all of its contents. We get the personal autograph, of course, and how Victorians started to collect it, just as theories were being drawn up about how handwriting gave away character, and even future, uncommitted, crime. We get literary references, that combine Drake with John Donne in expert ways. We also get the hand marks that accompany prehistoric cave art, climate signatures as seen in ice cores, and a heck of a lot more. The book covers each and every way we leave a mark, a memento, an excretion that might in some fashion be traced back to us. It's a book that perfectly fulfils its self-designed remit, then, and fits into this series very well (of books designed to focus on subjects you'd never predict you would read a whole book about). But boy is it a bit scattershot in seeming to go so far to little conclusion. I'm not in fact sure what I gained from these pages, then, but the author did make his mark on my afternoon's reading.

Instead of Signature when iI downloaded the book Fat is downloading,Please fix so I can read Signature,Thanks