A review by confusible
Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom

challenging informative reflective fast-paced

3.5

This is definitely not a book I would normally pick on my own but it was a Fantastic Strangelings pick so I gave it a try. I liked it better than I thought and it was a quick read. The topic was interesting and the book explores much more about the ethics of how these books were made and if they should still be preserved than I expected. I enjoyed some of the stories behind the books, especially the William Corder one but some of them made me lose a little faith in humanity, that doctors would have to ego to take a dead patient’s skin and use it to bind a book in their personal collection, or that binding a book in a murderer’s skin in punishment, both just gruesome to me. The book was a little bit rambling a full of tangents but still interesting. 

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