Postcrossing Blog

Every so often, I review books related to postcards or postal stuff in general on this blog, which is a fact that rapidly everyone in my life is getting to learn! Recently a friend stumbled across an older book they thought I’d surely be amused by: Martin Parr's Boring Postcards USA. I definitely enjoyed looking through it, so here I am to tell the rest of you about it! I’m pretty certain it’s out of print, but there are plenty of copies out there on the second-hand market. I’ve even found a version that seems to have been released in Germany, as Langweilige Postkarten!

Despite the title being “Boring Postcards”, I actually thought when reading it that there were definitely cards that postcrossers I’ve corresponded with would have loved to receive: advertising postcards showing tools, for example! Most of the postcards are super, super mundane: parking lots and highways and hotel rooms… but I can imagine people sending them all the same to show where they’ve actually been, or as a novelty, or for people for whom the landscapes are unfamiliar.

I’ll share a couple of the images with you all, to give you some examples, though the quality of the images won’t be great! I won’t share too many, as the images are pretty much all there is to it, except for some captions… but it’ll give you an idea!

I think the postcards might seem boring on the surface, but there’s definitely an attraction in imagining who might send or receive these, and I’d bet there are collectors who’d love some of these. Do you have any “boring postcards” like these of your own to send?

As ever, I’m eager to hear suggestions for other post-related books to read and review, especially ones which specifically focus on postcards! The best place to let me know is via the forum thread; if you haven’t posted in the forum before, you might need to browse a little bit first to open up all the areas of the forum.