Crap Taxidermy by Kat Su

 

I got an ARC of this from Netgalley ages ago and I remembered really liking it, so when I saw that it was on sale for $4.99, I thought it would be fun to revisit this art (anti-art?) book and see if I'd enjoy it as much the second time around. This book is exactly what it purports to be: it's a collection of incredibly bad taxidermy that is somehow both endearing, horrifying, and sad, all at once. It's divided into various sections of bad, so on the one hand you have works of taxidermy with creepy eyes, and on the other, you have anthropomorphized animals that aren't "bad" so much as they look like escapees from a Walter Potter museum.

I think the pictures are really funny, but it's kind of a morbid sense of "funny" that won't appeal to everyone. My personal favorites were the frog kicking back with a pint (Australia) and the inflated yellow horse that someone inexplicably turned into a ball (China). I feel like that's the weirdest one in here and I wish I had the backstory on it. Why yellow? Why a ball? Why a horse? I have SO MANY QUESTIONS.

In the back is a DIY on how to do your own taxidermy and I thought that section was pretty gross and skimmed over it. I also feel like the author should have really emphasized the fact that working with dead animals introduces the contamination risk for bacteria and the like, so you should make sure to thoroughly scrub any surfaces you worked on and gloves really shouldn't be optional (as the author stated here). Protective eye wear is a good idea, too. A year spent in a biology lab has made me a bit paranoid about that kind of thing.

So this was fine but I didn't like it as much this second time around as I did the first time, even though it did make me chuckle a couple times.

3.5 to 4 out of 5 stars