Related to an interesting read
About a year ago, I borrowed Stiff: the curious life of human cadavers / Mary Roach from the library, and it’s one of the best written, most hilarious and yet sensitive books I’ve ever read. About dead people, anyway.
I had actually caught a glimpse of her reading an excerpt from her book on C-SPAN Book TV, and decided I needed to read the entire book. It was neat, because at times I would let myself hear her actual voice as I was reading, and her habits of inflection. Some might say that it tainted my experience of the book, but I don’t really think so. There was actually an episode of Nip/Tuck that seemed like it was totally out of the first chapter of the book, which describes Roach’s visit to a place where surgeons practice on cadavers.
In any case, I was reminded of the book reading BoingBoing today, which included a post about a new way to be buried as part of the roots of a tree. If Roach could/would ever go back and edit the book, this would reside in the chapter about alternative burial methods.
Roach does an excellent job of getting you past what many might think of as the unsavory, deeply descriptive, but honest bits of the book, both in terms of the physical and the emotional. That is, if you let her. I think the book fits into the tough love recommendation for issues with death and dying. And as morbid as it sounds, she’s wicked funny, but in a tasteful fashion.
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