As usual, it starts with love. I had my heart set on the door-to-door encyclopedia salesboy. So begins Nance Van Winckel s latest collection of poetically altered encyclopedia entries that feature a mixture of quirky social satire and absurdist wit.

Entries like The Importance of Mood to Man use an encyclopedic tone to insist: Your body is two-thirds water. Mood is one-third body and Life and health depend on the mood taken into the body each day. An anatomic diagram of the nose is accompanied by the promise, A nose can smell rain coming. Alongside illustrations of the vestibule,...