This is a whole lot of book-ishness for one day, but trust us, special circumstances (shameless self-and-other-promotion) call for it. Because today, for the first time, we saw a copy of a book that we spent not a small number of Saturday afternoons and Sunday nights working on, and it totally rocks. Really, really hard.

The author, our bff Paola Antonelli was and is the brains and brawn behind the operation, Humble Masterpieces, a book based on last year's MoMA QNS exhibition of the same name. It is small and square and very well-designed, by Richard Ljoenes, and has lovely photographs by Francesco Mosto, on whom we developed a slight crush every time we dropped off a bottle cap or a biscuit joiner (and the book party gets awkward...now) and all sorts of fantastical discoveries of the stories behind what we always thought of as ordinary objects. Some examples:

The fortune cookie is not Chinese in origin.

The amount of wire used to make Slinkys since 1943 could wrap around the earth 126 times.

Salvador Dali designed the famous daisy pattern on Chupa Chup lollipops.

Simon Doonan was all loving up on it too:

"The raw majesty of the jelly bean, the exquisite futurism of a Wiffle Ball, the haunting spectre of a Tampax...Paola Antonelli sees oceans of timeless beauty in everything."

We're mostly looking forward to the oceans of celebratory martinis. For now, we're just going to hold our precious. Until Nov. 29, when everyone else can hold it too.

CORRECTION APPENDED thanks to a reader tip: "Someone wrote about Francesco Mosto and forgot to check her grammar."