I read a book!
Oct. 22nd, 2013 12:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
attractivegeekeryNot like, part of a book, or a comic book, or even a graphic novel.
A whole, full, actualfax, prose style book.
I have all the pride. All of it.
"Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy" by Melissa Milgrom
I picked up this book in the Gently Used section of my local book store* without really knowing much about either the topic of Taxidermy or Milgrom. The title and cover art are what prompted me to pick the damn thing up. The former because of my love/hate of bad puns, and the latter because it's an image of a clearly taxidermied fox and "What Does the Fox Say" was in my head on repeat that day.
I'm glad I picked it up.
I've always had a fascination for anatomy and dead things, one might even call this a morbid fascination, so in truth I'm kind of surprised it took me this long to start reading on the topic. Especially given that two of my favorite web series these days are Ask a Mortician and The Brain Scoop.
The book itself is a personal narrative of one woman's journey into Taxidermy, both as a practice and as a sub-cultural phenomenon. She went from a small Father and Son operation in New Jersey, to the Taxidermy World Championships, to the Smithsonian, and even across the pond, talking with various big wigs and muckity-mucks in the fandom...for lack of a better term
While I shouldn't have been surprised at how large a role Gun Culture played in American Taxidermy...I was. Most of my exposure to the craft comes in the form of museum mounts, and not animal heads on plaques in the living room. So reading the sections on the American side of things and seeing references to the Second Amendment kind of took me aback. And really, it shouldn't have, one of the exhibits at Boston's own Museum of Science is a hunter's trophy room.
Funny enough all the gun talk wasn't what got my dander up the most while reading this book, though reading about people specifically going out and killing "the perfect example of an animal" for the sole purpose of stuffing it in a realistically recreated setting for Science is wholly ridiculous. No what pissed me off the most were how casually people distanced themselves from the fact that these mounts were living breathing creatures with a historical provenance of equal importance.
There's one section about the renovation of the Smithsonian's Hall of Mammals where Milgrom reports that 50+ year old mounts were just tossed into the garbage, or in one instance allowed to be sold by a salvage company on eBay. Not only is this an insult to the science that purportedly went into the collection and preservation of this animal, but it's an environmental nightmare as a lot of these things were routinely cured with arsenic, among other things.
I found myself cursing the pages with a heartfelt, "This should be in a museum!" so strong Indiana Jones would have been proud.
SO yeah, thus begins my new resolution to read a book a month...even though this book took me nearly two to get through. It was well worth the $8 I plunked down on it.
Next up: "The Male Body" by Susan Bordo
*Brookline Booksmith, for those keeping score
A whole, full, actualfax, prose style book.
I have all the pride. All of it.
"Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy" by Melissa Milgrom
I picked up this book in the Gently Used section of my local book store* without really knowing much about either the topic of Taxidermy or Milgrom. The title and cover art are what prompted me to pick the damn thing up. The former because of my love/hate of bad puns, and the latter because it's an image of a clearly taxidermied fox and "What Does the Fox Say" was in my head on repeat that day.
I'm glad I picked it up.
I've always had a fascination for anatomy and dead things, one might even call this a morbid fascination, so in truth I'm kind of surprised it took me this long to start reading on the topic. Especially given that two of my favorite web series these days are Ask a Mortician and The Brain Scoop.
The book itself is a personal narrative of one woman's journey into Taxidermy, both as a practice and as a sub-cultural phenomenon. She went from a small Father and Son operation in New Jersey, to the Taxidermy World Championships, to the Smithsonian, and even across the pond, talking with various big wigs and muckity-mucks in the fandom...for lack of a better term
While I shouldn't have been surprised at how large a role Gun Culture played in American Taxidermy...I was. Most of my exposure to the craft comes in the form of museum mounts, and not animal heads on plaques in the living room. So reading the sections on the American side of things and seeing references to the Second Amendment kind of took me aback. And really, it shouldn't have, one of the exhibits at Boston's own Museum of Science is a hunter's trophy room.
Funny enough all the gun talk wasn't what got my dander up the most while reading this book, though reading about people specifically going out and killing "the perfect example of an animal" for the sole purpose of stuffing it in a realistically recreated setting for Science is wholly ridiculous. No what pissed me off the most were how casually people distanced themselves from the fact that these mounts were living breathing creatures with a historical provenance of equal importance.
There's one section about the renovation of the Smithsonian's Hall of Mammals where Milgrom reports that 50+ year old mounts were just tossed into the garbage, or in one instance allowed to be sold by a salvage company on eBay. Not only is this an insult to the science that purportedly went into the collection and preservation of this animal, but it's an environmental nightmare as a lot of these things were routinely cured with arsenic, among other things.
I found myself cursing the pages with a heartfelt, "This should be in a museum!" so strong Indiana Jones would have been proud.
SO yeah, thus begins my new resolution to read a book a month...even though this book took me nearly two to get through. It was well worth the $8 I plunked down on it.
Next up: "The Male Body" by Susan Bordo
*Brookline Booksmith, for those keeping score
