Drop zone confirmed: Inherited Risk by Jeffrey Meyers

 When I rolled this book up I made some comment about how this was taking me outside of my comfort zone, and boy was I right. Another mystery book, and definitely not one I would have bought for myself. Though whoever did buy it got this very shiny hardcover for 25% off. I have never been too interested in biography books, and especially not in biographies of movie stars. I am concerned that I was lent this book by a well-meaning relative (possibly my grandmother) and they never asked for it back. It probably went on a shelf years ago and I promptly forgot about it. Don't worry it is not a library book.

It is very shiny and silvery

What this book is is the first book in this project that I am dropping. Before I discuss why I am dropping it I want to justify dropping books in general. I drop a lot of books. Sometimes it is because I got bored and I was not actively engaged. Sometimes, such as in this case, it is because the experience is a bad one. When you read something for fun you are not swearing an oath to finish the book at any hazard. You are engaging with the book to have a good time. That is its purpose. If it is not serving that purpose get out as soon as you figure that out. Then pick up something different. There are so many options out there that it is better to move on rather than grinding your way through if it is not worth it. I have around 500 books on my shelves, with more waiting for shelves, and more ebooks on top of that. The written word is not rare, and by reading a lot of books, even if you don't finish them you get a lot of different perspectives. So drop books, especially when you don't like reading them.

I did not like reading Inherited Risk: Errol and Sean Flynn in Hollywood and Vietnam by Jeffrey Meyers, and the main reason is the subject matter. It is a biography of the actor Errol Flynn and his son Sean, which is already a red flag. And then in the three chapters I read it was clear to me that the focus of this work would be on the "glamorous" lifestyle of these two men that the author fawned over while the substantive events of their lives make them pretty bad people. A big problem with biography is its narrow focus. Unless you are intensely interested in the person there is not much to get out of single biography, and in this case, three chapters were enough to produce an intense dislike of two men who were most notable for how handsome and glamorous they were while being bad people. So I dropped it. I would be interested in a history of old stars of the silver screen, or a history of Vietnam war journalists that included a paragraph on these people, but a 324 page book? That is too much, especially when the author and I disagree so much on the value of glamorous people. 

This book is going in a box, but there are plenty of other books on my shelves. A d20 gets me shelf number 11, that has 23 books on it, so another d20 and a d4 gets me book number 18.

Look at my dice. One set was a gift, the other I bought myself, guess which is which.

Book number 18 is Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler edited by Edward Mead Earle. Machiavelli and Clausewitz and Marx oh my. A little heavier affair, both in weight and subject matter.

A nice little peak at shelf #11, and this interesting little book.

Avalanche of Anecdotes: Dinosaurs in the Attic by Douglas J. Preston

Dinosaurs in the Attic by Douglas J. Preston, or to give it its full title Dinosaurs in the Attic: an excursion into The American Museum of Natural History, is another one of those mysterious additions to my bookshelf. My copy bears a 1986 copywriter, but the binding and cover, as well as my vague memories, suggest to me that this copy was printed much later than that. As you can probably tell I don't remember how or why I got it. I think I picked it up for a class on Museum studies in grad school, but nothing in the book seemed to trigger anything in my mind. I was not a bad student in grad school, I read the books that were assigned, so who knows how I got it.

The book itself can best be described as a horde of anecdotes. It uses stories about items in the museum as a springboard into stories about early anthropology, early dinosaur hunting, and other activities that produced the items that fill out The American Museum of Natural History's collection. The best metaphor I can think of is a tidal pool. It is very shallow, with a lot of interesting things in it, but as you stand there and look at the pool you know the ocean is right over there. Is that a bad thing? No, because the book is fun, and Douglas Preston is a good storyteller, with a great eye for length. He gives a lot of background and information without going too long and potentially boring you. It makes the book a good entry point into a lot of different subjects. As you read the book you might find something that catches your eye, like Charles Sternberg, the fossil hunter who wrote poems about how God called him to paleontology. I looked up his work in A Story of the Past; or The Romance of Science and it is pretty good. It is not every day you read a poem that is basically the equivalent of the novel Raptor Red by paleontologist Dr. Robert Bakker.  Devout paleontological poems are not something I would have looked up myself without stumbling on it in this book. 

So I would recommend this book. It didn't change my life, but it was a good fun read. Perhaps I would even pick it up again and read a section or two later, just for fun. If you want a bunch of interesting anecdotes from a museum I would read it. To dip into another metaphor it is more of a sample plater than a meal.

With that metaphor, we are on to the next. A roll of a 3 actually gets us the shelf that has Raptor Red the dinosaur novel so maybe I'll roll that one up, but there are 27 other books (I am not counting the dictionary also on that shelf) so luck will be the determiner. Both the d20 and the d8 rolled a 2, so it is book number 3. Book number 3 is Inherited Risk Errol and Sean Flynn in Hollywood and Vietnam by Jeffrey Meyers. I had no idea I owned any sort of Hollywood biography. This little project is taking me out of my comfort zone.