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.