Cabinet Of Curiosities is a very entertaining collection of short true stories. It is divided in multiple categories:

American History
Coincidences
Animals
Mysteries
Places and many more.

All the categories are full of strange occurances, oddities and very interesting unremembered historic facts from ancient history up into the 1900's. It reads very similarly to they types of stories Ripley's Believe it or Not. Be prepared, while reading it, to blurt out to friends around you things like, "Did you know a chicken can live without its head for years?" These are a very quick reads because each story is roughly 2 1/2 pages.

Thank you to St Martin's Press and Netgalley for this e-ARC copy of this entertaining collection.

I want to give this 4 stars out of being a general fan of Aaron Mahnke's work, but I consider this a lesser work than his Lore books. The stories are meant to be shorter and snappier than Lore, and they are, but in succession, even artfully arranged they can get repetitive in sections. The interview intermissions are also more distracting than interesting.

Yet, for all the stories that I knew, some fantastic new stories took me by surprise too, so overall I enjoyed this book, but not as much as his previous ones.

In truth, I wish he would do books based on the seasons of Unobscured; I loved those deep dives.

Fans of Aaron Mahnke will love his new compilation Cabinet of Curiosities! Based on his podcast of the same name, Mahnke has created a fabulous dive into some of the most interesting stories ever told. I listened to this on audiobook, which he also narrates, and found it to be so enjoyable. These stories are broken up into sections and each story is just a few minutes long, allowing the listener to jump in and out of it easily. As with any of his tales, so many of them included those "aha" moments as you started to figure out the meaning, the person, or the moral of the tale. Aaron Mahnke again proves his storytelling chops in this book that hits shelves today!

As a fan of the podcast, I really wanted to check this book out. If you've never listened to the podcast, then this is a great book full of short but very interesting stories that you can read all at once or take a little at a time to make it last. If you are a fan of the podcast then you probably don't need to read the book at all as the stories included, or at least a lot of them, are ones you've already heard before. It wasn't bad to revisit them, do don't avoid it if you've already listened to the podcast but I wouldn't come expecting something new. (I'll note that my memory isn't great so it could be that there are new stories mixed in but I recognized too many of them.) I also expect this will be fixed for the final product but in my advance version, the story 'Wild Coincidences' was a blank page... there was no story.

Special thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for sending me an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I absolutely ADORE Aaron Mahnke! I have been a huge fan of his podcast Lore for many moons now. Because of this, I am also very well versed in his other works. When I found out he was making a book version of Cabinet of Curiosities, I knew I had to jump at this IMMEDIATELY!

And I was not disappointed! The book is sectioned like one would see in an actual museum looking at different artifacts. Each story is a few pages long, grouped with "like" stories. One of the things I enjoyed most about this book is the fact that each story was so short. I caught myself reading them while waiting for an email back, as the microwaved finished cooking a meal, or during commercials/ads for other material I was enjoying.

The book itself is incredibly written. Aaron Mahnke has a wonderful way of adding humor and wit to even the darkest of stories. I thoroughly enjoyed each story he chose, and it really made me feel like I was sneaking into his own private collection of artifacts! It probably helped that I could hear each of these stories in HIS voice, because I am such of fan of his podcasts!

If you are looking for something that has multiple tiny stories within one well-curated collections, this is your book! It would be a great addition to someone's coffee table or place where a guest could read one quickly while waiting for the host. I cannot recommend this book enough and in fact have already told quite a few people about it! One thing I know for sure, if Aaron Mahke is attached to a project, it is always BRILLIANT!

This is the perfect novel for a waiting room, coffee table, dare I say guest bathroom? It is filled with odd, even bizarre stories from a coin flip that decided the fate of three people to wars won and lost all during a celestial event.

I had a good time with these tales and read a few each night before bedtime. It would make an excellent gift for someone who likes history and facts.