Book finished: The owl that fell from the sky
06/08/2014
This is a short collection of tales from the world of museum collections, written by a curator at Auckland War Memorial Museum in New Zealand. He even covers some displays and artifacts I have seen myself, going right back to my childhood, like the stuffed elephant even I as a child could see was suffering from the ravages of time, and the beautiful dioramas which it saddened me to learn have largely gone out of favour in world museum circles, and which have been reduced at Auckland to a single one showing albatrosses.
It might seem this could be a dry subject, but the author has chosen to relate tales of exhibits with strange, quirky and bizarre sources or fates, while illustrating the intrinsic scientific value of collections, and succeeds in keeping the reader's interest. Well, it worked for me anyway. I recommend this book to anyone interested in Natural History. |
Read as an e-book borrowed from Auckland Libraries via Overdrive, on my Kobo Touch e-reader