A la Cart: the secret lives of grocery shoppers by Hillary Carlip 

What we eat, what we buy; these seem like small details in our busy lives.  But when you stop and look at the food that a person purchases, it can paint a revealing portrait of that shopper.  In her book, A la Cart: the secret lives of grocery shoppers, Hillary Carlip creates the stories of twenty-six unique people based only on shopping lists that she has found.  Click here for Hillary’s fun video describing the book.  

These lost or abandoned shopping lists are fleshed out into full characters on the page, and the author goes even farther by physically becoming them in the accompanying photos.  She skillfully transforms into creepy Derrick, whose shopping list reads “mouse traps, cheese, mouse,” eighty-one year old Estelle who is buying milk, cheese, ice cream, and “gas-ex (!!!),” and lots of others.  The photos are amazing, and it’s easy to forget that they are all actually the same person.  This book is an entertaining and imaginative journey into the personal lives of strangers and may inspire you to start your own collection of lost grocery lists.