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Much Ado about Stuffing: The Best and Worst of @CrapTaxidermy
Only in death can true beauty exist.--@Crap Taxidermy, the Twitter account deemed "most horrifying" by Buzzfeed
Much Ado about Stuffing brings together the best and worst specimens featured on Twitter's hugely popular @CrapTaxidermy feed, along with some never before seen abominations of nature.
Authored by Adam Cornish, a forest-dwelling, Taxonomy admirer, this book is not for the faint of heart or humor.
You may laugh; you might cry; the only thing guaranteed is that for every book sold a donation will be made to help a real sanctuary that houses living animals that don't wear clothes or sit on chairs.
Much Ado about Stuffing brings together the best and worst specimens featured on Twitter's hugely popular @CrapTaxidermy feed, along with some never before seen abominations of nature.
Authored by Adam Cornish, a forest-dwelling, Taxonomy admirer, this book is not for the faint of heart or humor.
You may laugh; you might cry; the only thing guaranteed is that for every book sold a donation will be made to help a real sanctuary that houses living animals that don't wear clothes or sit on chairs.
96 pages, Paperback
First published September 2, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
April 29, 2025
For your sand-laden corpse to become a meme is not the afterlife most offer supplication in hopes of being granted, but we give thanks for the sacrifice of these critters to provide momentary amusement by adding captions to photographs of their final forms in implied anthropomorphic quirkiness.
We live on after death in the memories of those on whom we made an impression, and sometimes that impression is how your half-decayed remains were desecrated further by an amateur taxidermist with a spare pair of googly eyes.
We live on after death in the memories of those on whom we made an impression, and sometimes that impression is how your half-decayed remains were desecrated further by an amateur taxidermist with a spare pair of googly eyes.
May 15, 2019
THIS YUCKOON IS CRANKY!!!
i'm not entirely sure how this book relates to that other book: Crap Taxidermy that i reviewed in the wayback.
one is from a blog, one is from a twitter - you're asking the wrong person if you want further distinction. all i know is that both books feature photographs of animals who have been ineptly stuffed and preserved in various ways, many of them humiliating.
and many just bizarre
now, i know taxidermy makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but i'm a monster. while i love the little animals as much as anyone else who knows what youtube is, and while i don't advocate going out and killing animals for fun or art, i do enjoy the animal displays at the museum of natural history, and i enjoy these too, on a totally different level.
and how can one argue with people who wish to lovingly preserve the memory of their beloved pet in a more tangible way?
that other book is much longer and more comprehensive (i.e. more horrifying), and it has better photography and text, but this one is still well worth checking out. there's some overlap between the two - some repetition of photos, although i'm pretty sure there is no end to the things people can come up with when they suddenly find themselves in the possession of a dead animal WHO HAS DIED PEACEFULLY IN ITS SLEEP AFTER A LONG AND FRUITFUL LIFE.
even the most tender-hearted has gotta smile at these little guys, right?
whatever this is wants you to laugh. it really, really does. laugh for the creepy monster.
and even that cranky yuckoon has come around!!! it's FUN being stuffed!
for the record, i would also enjoy this book if it were filled with humans who had been taxidermied. or plants. or ... geodes.
i'm an equal-opportunity monster.
come to my blog!
i'm not entirely sure how this book relates to that other book: Crap Taxidermy that i reviewed in the wayback.
one is from a blog, one is from a twitter - you're asking the wrong person if you want further distinction. all i know is that both books feature photographs of animals who have been ineptly stuffed and preserved in various ways, many of them humiliating.
and many just bizarre
now, i know taxidermy makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but i'm a monster. while i love the little animals as much as anyone else who knows what youtube is, and while i don't advocate going out and killing animals for fun or art, i do enjoy the animal displays at the museum of natural history, and i enjoy these too, on a totally different level.
and how can one argue with people who wish to lovingly preserve the memory of their beloved pet in a more tangible way?
that other book is much longer and more comprehensive (i.e. more horrifying), and it has better photography and text, but this one is still well worth checking out. there's some overlap between the two - some repetition of photos, although i'm pretty sure there is no end to the things people can come up with when they suddenly find themselves in the possession of a dead animal WHO HAS DIED PEACEFULLY IN ITS SLEEP AFTER A LONG AND FRUITFUL LIFE.
even the most tender-hearted has gotta smile at these little guys, right?
whatever this is wants you to laugh. it really, really does. laugh for the creepy monster.
and even that cranky yuckoon has come around!!! it's FUN being stuffed!
for the record, i would also enjoy this book if it were filled with humans who had been taxidermied. or plants. or ... geodes.
i'm an equal-opportunity monster.
come to my blog!
October 25, 2017
For some animals, death is only the beginning . . .
. . . of a life spent being laughed at and garnering eyerolls.
A few of these poor unfortunate souls are gathered in this book which presents the animal's photo on one page and a witty caption on the adjourning side.
Sometimes it's very hard to tell what animal the poor creature was in life.
Though you gotta admit, Walter and Jesse are pretty doggone cool.
If you'd like to see more of these (occasionally hilarious) crimes against nature, here's the twitter feed - https://twitter.com/CrapTaxidermy?ref...
. . . of a life spent being laughed at and garnering eyerolls.
A few of these poor unfortunate souls are gathered in this book which presents the animal's photo on one page and a witty caption on the adjourning side.
Sometimes it's very hard to tell what animal the poor creature was in life.
Though you gotta admit, Walter and Jesse are pretty doggone cool.
If you'd like to see more of these (occasionally hilarious) crimes against nature, here's the twitter feed - https://twitter.com/CrapTaxidermy?ref...
December 1, 2015
I have a weird love for bad taxidermy. It's been a hidden secret of mine for a long time. But now, I choose to let the freak flag fly. I show pictures to everyone who will give me a moment of their time. This book is perfect for just that; I can shove this in ones face while I giggle non-stop. I love it. When I need to smile, I go to Crap Taxidermy!
August 4, 2015
THIS WAS BRILLIANT.
I was already a fan of crap taxidermy before seeing this book, but there were so many new animals in this book that I couldn't contain my laughter.
I LAUGHED SO HARD. It's a quick read - like 10 minutes max, but it's the best ten minutes you're going to spend. The pictures are high quality...but that animals in the pictures are not. They are tragically hilarious. I don't even know where to begin when trying to explain these monstrosities. The quotes are so funny too...and somehow work perfectly with each image.
Amazing. This one is going permanantly on my bookshelf. If you're having a bad day - read this. It will make your day 1000000x times better.
July 9, 2018
Twisted , demented , inappropriate and disturbing . In other words , everything I would want in this type of book . I would have given it a higher rating , but 'they' might find out and start giving me the shock treatments again !
December 6, 2017
When you are recovering from brain surgery, the nice surgeon fills you FULL of an array of painkillers, anything to keep you from touching your face.
Ambien is a venomous date on a good night. Combine it with the very best Afghanistan has to offer and the pictures in taxidermy books COME ALIVE and run around the room for a few minutes before you pass out.
So I have a collection of taxidermy books now, because you just can't go back to Iowa once you've seen Paris, and this is actually the worst taxidermy book.
Ambien is a venomous date on a good night. Combine it with the very best Afghanistan has to offer and the pictures in taxidermy books COME ALIVE and run around the room for a few minutes before you pass out.
So I have a collection of taxidermy books now, because you just can't go back to Iowa once you've seen Paris, and this is actually the worst taxidermy book.
February 7, 2020
I found this in my Overdrive app and thought it looked funny - I've never seen anything by the guy before (not Twitter or a blog). I recently read a book by Jenny Lawson, and she looooooves taxidermy, so I thought I would like it. I kinda did, but not really. The pictures were great, but the text, trying to be funny, just didn't do it for me. And maybe it was because I was reading it as an e-book, but the format was pretty funky, and I'm not sure I even got the whole book (it seemed shorter than the 96 pages listed on Goodreads).
February 18, 2022
A quick and amusing read without a lot of "stuffing" to it, haha. Perfect if you're looking for an image-heavy book with some definitely disturbing taxidermy. Plus, there's some fun quips. Not my favorite read of the year, but certainly enjoyable.
March 22, 2019
Equal parts horrifying and hilarious.
December 7, 2019
Completely and delightfully bonkers, irreverent and completely stuffed.
September 1, 2014
The following review is from Marginalia: A Reading Log. If you appreciate/dispute it, please feel free to click on over to leave a comment or little Google thumby thing!
As someone who wasn't aware of the @craptaxidermy Twitter account before receiving this ARC, I based my initial impression off the marketing connected to Much Ado about Stuffing: The Best and Worst of @craptaxidermy. I felt a bit of terror in my fingertips -- was I about to see That Which Cannot Be Unseen? Would there be creepy-crawlies so grotesque I would want to slam the book shut -- as best you can slam a thin, postcard-sized paperback -- and never near a forest again? Would I forever feel an awkward element in my relationship with my cat, with me always imagining him on a wall mount and him wondering why I keep spending way too much time scritching through his fur with a loupe?
Fortunately, Much Ado... does not traumatize at all, even for those of us who mute the television the second we hear Sarah MacLachlan start up. ("In the arms of an angel / may you cry through the rest of this 3 AM House rerun...") First-time author Adam Cornish provides relatively light gallows humor through his one- to two-line captions accompanying the wild shots he's selected, which were all submitted to his Twitter feed by his followers. The animals (specimens? figures?) look so ridiculous that you will laugh far more than you'll be grossed out. The eyes in particular are ripe for comedic dissection (sorry), with a few looking like little more than marbles or perhaps gumballs. I'm also 90% certain I saw some human hair on one fox, which somehow seemed fitting in this collection of, well, crap. There's a polar bear that made me bust out laughing as it startled me with its sheer ridiculousness, and I loved what I can only refer to as "the creature on page 24." (Really, someone tell me if that's an otter, or a turtle, or what, because I am so lost.) And page 76...where, precisely, is the face? This is where the discerning reader should note that you should never have to ask the question "where is the face" when viewing photographs of taxidermy. And that's the fun of the book.
The one thing that confused me from the very beginning was the fact that some of the examples actually looked really good. (Prepare to be delighted, fellow Breaking Bad fans.) I kept staring at some because I thought I had to be missing some type of egregious error by the taxidermist that perhaps I wasn't knowledgeable enough to catch. After all, it's got "crap" written all over it, the cover image is of a truly heinous-looking...once-fox, and the write-ups all emphasized the fact that the whole concept of the Twitter feed -- and therefore the book -- is to highlight, in the words of the publisher, "abominations of nature." But when you read the end credits, you see several professional taxidermists thanked for making the really nice -- and honestly very creative and cool -- examples for the book. The end result is that the book feels a bit confused about its own identity. Next time, Cornish should consider making a separate not-crap volume in order to avoid the repeated jolt from am-I-laughing to am-I-admiring.
Much Ado about Stuffing has some great moments; oddly enough, they tend to come from the staged great examples. (High-paw to the true artist behind the raccoon family. Delightful work.) At under 100 pages, with an uneven tone and sometimes cheesy jokes (including a predictable closer), Cornish's first effort will appeal primarily to pre-existing fans of @craptaxidermy and those with a fondness for the burgeoning meme-lit category. A portion of the proceeds from sales go to (living) animal care causes. And my cat will go into a tasteful urn like my beloved past ones did -- no taxidermy, crap or otherwise.
As someone who wasn't aware of the @craptaxidermy Twitter account before receiving this ARC, I based my initial impression off the marketing connected to Much Ado about Stuffing: The Best and Worst of @craptaxidermy. I felt a bit of terror in my fingertips -- was I about to see That Which Cannot Be Unseen? Would there be creepy-crawlies so grotesque I would want to slam the book shut -- as best you can slam a thin, postcard-sized paperback -- and never near a forest again? Would I forever feel an awkward element in my relationship with my cat, with me always imagining him on a wall mount and him wondering why I keep spending way too much time scritching through his fur with a loupe?
Fortunately, Much Ado... does not traumatize at all, even for those of us who mute the television the second we hear Sarah MacLachlan start up. ("In the arms of an angel / may you cry through the rest of this 3 AM House rerun...") First-time author Adam Cornish provides relatively light gallows humor through his one- to two-line captions accompanying the wild shots he's selected, which were all submitted to his Twitter feed by his followers. The animals (specimens? figures?) look so ridiculous that you will laugh far more than you'll be grossed out. The eyes in particular are ripe for comedic dissection (sorry), with a few looking like little more than marbles or perhaps gumballs. I'm also 90% certain I saw some human hair on one fox, which somehow seemed fitting in this collection of, well, crap. There's a polar bear that made me bust out laughing as it startled me with its sheer ridiculousness, and I loved what I can only refer to as "the creature on page 24." (Really, someone tell me if that's an otter, or a turtle, or what, because I am so lost.) And page 76...where, precisely, is the face? This is where the discerning reader should note that you should never have to ask the question "where is the face" when viewing photographs of taxidermy. And that's the fun of the book.
The one thing that confused me from the very beginning was the fact that some of the examples actually looked really good. (Prepare to be delighted, fellow Breaking Bad fans.) I kept staring at some because I thought I had to be missing some type of egregious error by the taxidermist that perhaps I wasn't knowledgeable enough to catch. After all, it's got "crap" written all over it, the cover image is of a truly heinous-looking...once-fox, and the write-ups all emphasized the fact that the whole concept of the Twitter feed -- and therefore the book -- is to highlight, in the words of the publisher, "abominations of nature." But when you read the end credits, you see several professional taxidermists thanked for making the really nice -- and honestly very creative and cool -- examples for the book. The end result is that the book feels a bit confused about its own identity. Next time, Cornish should consider making a separate not-crap volume in order to avoid the repeated jolt from am-I-laughing to am-I-admiring.
Much Ado about Stuffing has some great moments; oddly enough, they tend to come from the staged great examples. (High-paw to the true artist behind the raccoon family. Delightful work.) At under 100 pages, with an uneven tone and sometimes cheesy jokes (including a predictable closer), Cornish's first effort will appeal primarily to pre-existing fans of @craptaxidermy and those with a fondness for the burgeoning meme-lit category. A portion of the proceeds from sales go to (living) animal care causes. And my cat will go into a tasteful urn like my beloved past ones did -- no taxidermy, crap or otherwise.
September 23, 2014
I cried. I couldn't help it. This book hurt me. I laughed until I couldn't laugh anymore. Or so I thought, but as soon as I picked it back up after a laughing fit, I would put the book right back down and laugh. My stomach hurts. I have tears streaming down my face. I even snorted. In front of my other half. But I didn't care, because it was so funny.
I highly recommend this book if you need an experience like the one I've just described.
I highly recommend this book if you need an experience like the one I've just described.
September 21, 2014
Seriously creepy, perfect for Halloween...
November 2, 2014
Reminds me of Jenny Lawson, the Bloggess. Some of the mounts are scary. Some are just plain creepy. The descriptions add much humor and giggles.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews