German Literary Critic Reviews IKEA Catalog

German literary critic Hellmuth Karasek thinks it's a scandal that “the world’s most widely distributed book” has never received a proper review. Surprisingly, he's not referring to The Bible or even Fifty Shades of Grey—he’s talking about the latest IKEA catalog, profoundly titled, It’s the Little Things That Matter.

In a recent promotional video released by the furniture company, Karasek takes the writers over at IKEA to task, complaining, “The characters are forced to crowd themselves between the furniture, they seldom get their say, they barely speak coherently, and yet this work has become such a success.”

In the review, Karasek treats the magazine as though it were a real novel, analyzing its language and character development, and even touching on ideas by Sigmund Freud and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It’s a fun little tongue-in-cheek video, and evidence that a good literary critic can find something interesting to say about almost anything.