Ronnie G. (frenchgiant) reviewed on 2/10/2011 + 22 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

I've always had an odd fascination with taxidermied animals...Maybe it stems from my childhood crush on dinosaurs & my associated yearning to become a paleontologist, or perhaps it's because my dad was a somewhat avid hunter who had one of his deer heads mounted and placed directly above our living room TV. It used to stare down at us day after day and every Christmas we put a Santa hat on it. It did not seem amused.

With all of that said, I never acquired a taste for hunting and never went down the all too creepy path of scraping roadkill off the road and reassembling it in my bedroom. I simply enjoyed nature from afar, reading books about extinct & endangered species, drooling over Jurassic Park, tracing pictures of dinosaur bones, and visiting museums from time to time.

Alas, my childhood dreams of becoming a paleontologist never came to fruition and as an adult I must continue to live vicariously through movies and literature...and this my friends is what drove me to read Still Life. As a fan of Mary Roach (author of "Stiff") I am continuously on the prowl for off the wall non-fiction books that delve into odd & peculiar topics. One day while aimlessly surfing the web I stumbled upon Still Life, it's cover adorned with a taxidermied fox, and I was instantly enthralled.

Having just finished the book I can definitely say that it was a worthwhile read. While I've always found stuffed animals interesting, this interest has always been accompanied by a certain level of creepiness. Let's face it, the idea of someone spending countless hours skinning, scraping, tanning, stretching, molding, brushing, and sewing animal corpses is freaking bizarre, but somehow Melissa Milgrom manages to make this obscure art form seem somewhat appealing.

This book is packed with some very interesting history on the early days of taxidermy and the lengths that museums and collectors would go to fill their halls and glass cases to the brim with creatures from all across the globe. It also contains an odd yet endearing cast of modern day taxidermists who own shops, work for museums, and compete in international taxidermy competitions. Finally, we are introduced to the somewhat gory, yet surprisingly interesting details of the actual techniques that are used to produce these works of art.

When all is said and down I definitely have a new found appreciation for taxidermists and the painstaking efforts they undergo to recreate life as accurately as possible. Now this is not to say that you'll find me stuffing an opossum or squirrel anytime soon but the next time I make my way into a museum you may see me lingering a tab bit longer next to the stuffed moose with the big rack.

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