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A review by audaciaray
Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom
5.0
Favorite non-fiction book I've read so far in 2010!
I first learned of this book last fall at The Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest at Union Hall in Brooklyn, when the author Melissa Milgrom gave a short talk and then acted as a judge of the contest. I went right home and put it on my to-read queue and then patiently waited for the book to make its debut this spring.
I totally loved the book - the behind-the-scenes stuff about taxidermy shops, conventions, and natural history museums is really vivid and fabulous. The people that Milgrom spends time with are funny and peculiar - in a really lovable kind of way. The thing I perhaps appreciated the most about Milgrom's approach is that she really got into it; there's no sneering at "those people." Taxidermists are for sure a wacky bunch, but Milgrom embraces them wholeheartedly and doesn't treat them with disdain at all.
I first learned of this book last fall at The Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest at Union Hall in Brooklyn, when the author Melissa Milgrom gave a short talk and then acted as a judge of the contest. I went right home and put it on my to-read queue and then patiently waited for the book to make its debut this spring.
I totally loved the book - the behind-the-scenes stuff about taxidermy shops, conventions, and natural history museums is really vivid and fabulous. The people that Milgrom spends time with are funny and peculiar - in a really lovable kind of way. The thing I perhaps appreciated the most about Milgrom's approach is that she really got into it; there's no sneering at "those people." Taxidermists are for sure a wacky bunch, but Milgrom embraces them wholeheartedly and doesn't treat them with disdain at all.