How To Be Dangerous

Un-ironic, old and smelly-looking. Look out! Here comes The Dangerous Book For Boys:

Exuding the brisk breeziness of Boy Scout manuals and Boy’s Own annuals, “The Dangerous Book” is a childhood how-to guide that covers everything from paper airplanes to go-carts, skipping stones to skinning a rabbit.

“I wanted to do the kind of book that we had lusted after when we were kids,” said Conn Iggulden, who co-wrote the book with his younger brother Hal.

“My dad was born in 1923 and his father was born in 1850, and we had some old books in the house with titles like ‘Chemical Amusements and Experiments’ and ‘Fun With Gunpowder.’ The thing we didn’t have was a single compendium of everything we wanted to do. I remember endlessly looking through these (books), generally to find things that I could make explode or set on fire.”

There’s an old-fashioned, improving tone to the book, with its chapters on famous battles and true tales of courage, its Latin phrases and rules of grammar, and “seven poems every boy should know.”

You know I’m going to buy this book, right?

Book teaches boys how to be ‘Dangerous’ – CNN.com

The Dangerous Book for Boys (Link to Amazon)

7 responses to “How To Be Dangerous”

  1. You want to learn how to skin a rabbit? 🙁 But they’re so cute.

    (Your blog gives me template vertigo, in a good way.)

  2. Reminiscent of Scout, Dill, Jem and their search and misadventures of Boo. That’d be an interesting book

  3. Whenever I think of skinnin’ rabbits, Imani, I think of that Michael Moore movie Roger and Me. His first one, the one about his home town. Anyway, there was this weird woman in there who raised her own rabbits for food. She’s skinnin’ a rabbit while she’s being interviewed. It’s like peeling off a shirt.

    Wait, who’s Dill? Was he their weird neighbor? I’ve read Mockingbird twice, Ebudae, yet I can’t quite remember off the top of my head. Again, movies. I see Gregory Peck and the kids when I think of Mockingbird. Also: popular local band when I was a teenager: Tequila Mockingbird.

    Oh, and sorry about the blog vertigo. I’m just never satisfied with the design. I’ll pretend my constant tweaks make things more interesting.

  4. No no, don’t apologise for the template changes, I like it. (I think this version of the comment section may be my favourite so far.)

    Dill, you fake To Kill a Mockingbird fan is the kid who has a relative in Scout and Jem’s neighbourhood who he visits every summer or so. He always has tall tales about fairly adventurous uncles (I think its uncles).

  5. F-f-f-f-fake?! Aw, c’mon, it was over a decade ago that I last read it. Does it make up for it that I call holes in trees Boo Radley holes?

  6. Hmmm. Barely. 😉

  7. LOL! Close escape, Ian!

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