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The Museum of Whales You Will Never See
The Museum of Whales You Will Never See: And Other Excursions to Iceland's Most Unusual Museums | A. Kendra Greene
17 posts | 6 read | 1 reading | 15 to read
Mythic creatures, natural wonders, and the mysterious human impulse to collect are on beguiling display in this poetic tribute to the museums of an otherworldly island nation. Iceland is home to only 330,000 people but more than 265 museums and public collections, ranging from the intensely physical, like the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which collects the penises of every mammal known to exist in Iceland, to the vaporously metaphysical, like the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, which poses a particularly Icelandic problem: How to display what can't be seen? In The Museum of Whales You Will Never See, A. Kendra Greene is our wise and whimsical guide through this cabinet of curiosities, showing us, in dreamlike anecdotes and more than thirty charming illustrations, how a seemingly random assortment of objects--a stuffed whooper swan, a rubber boot, a shard of obsidian, a chastity belt for rams--can map a people's past and future, their fears and obsessions. "The world is chockablock with untold wonders," she writes, "there for the taking, ready to be uncovered at any moment, if only we keep our eyes open."
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blurb
Bookwormjillk
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I‘m sitting out here reading about Iceland and trying to conjure up a cold front. It hasn‘t rained in a month! #FoodAndLit

review
Robotswithpersonality
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Pickpick

I love when non-fiction is paired with a beautiful writing style. The focus is on the history of the museums themselves, their founding and housing and collection origins, just enough historical context. Questioning 'what makes a museum?' especially 'vs private collection' ? Iceland seen as an alien physical landscape of close knit communities with its own rocky history. A fair amount of quirky, a bit WTF?! Definitely worth a read.

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Robotswithpersonality
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Mr. Hippopotamus the Cat. I love him.

"The cat is Mr. Hippopotamus. He is appropriately large and round and gray, and seems as comfortable at the museum as anywhere else...there is an oversize portrait of Mr. Hippopotamus staring beneficently into the middle distance, what Sigurd[th]ur Atlason calls his communist leader pose." ?

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Robotswithpersonality
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Today's 'scratched my brain just right' phrase is a bit o' alliteration:

"...skip-skimming across such a strata of survival"

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Robotswithpersonality
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New word alert! Icelandic has some nifty ones. If your population rates low enough on census, you get to be "...a dreifbyli: a 'someplace'..."

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Robotswithpersonality
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Adorable sketch, sad reflections.

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Robotswithpersonality
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A different way to think about birds:

"...tokens of transport and circulation"

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Robotswithpersonality
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Bias at work? It's at least useful to keep in mind.

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Robotswithpersonality
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I don't suggest anyone test the hypothesis, but I've found it to be true, on occasion.

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Mskt6891
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8 likes1 stack add
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Freespirit
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My final book for 2020 takes me back to Iceland 🇮🇸 with a tour through its museums and quirky collections. An amazing place to visit especially for myself coming from a subtropical climate without a hint of snow, lava or ice!!
Happy New Year everyone. Hopefully one day we will be able to adventure abroad again. Happy reading! Stay healthy 😘😘

41 likes2 stack adds
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Christinak
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Settling in with this one tonight.
#travelwithbooks

37 likes1 stack add
review
kbuggle
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Pickpick

An odd little one, but interesting

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WanderingBookaneer
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Bookzombie Interesting. 4y
GingerAntics Hm, that certainly is interesting. Welcome to Wales I guess. 4y
51 likes1 stack add2 comments
review
akaGingerK
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Pickpick

I love this book. I love that it reminds me that I love museums, but more than that, I love that it reminds me how beautiful & strange my fellow humans are. Absolutely recommend. #ARC

6 likes1 stack add
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akaGingerK
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“It‘s always been the story that matters most, the connections inferred, the object not as a thing of inherent properties but as a touchstone to who we are and where we come from.”

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akaGingerK
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“The tourist then demanded to know, ‘What kind of museum has only one bathroom?‘ A good question of course. Except that it wasn‘t a museum back then. It was a house with facilities totally adequate for the three people who actually lived there.”
...
“And maybe this is the structure of all museums. One doesn‘t pay to see the collection; one pays for a place to pee.”
#ARC

Lcsmcat 😂 5y
8 likes1 comment