June 24, 2011
Stiff
Non-fiction books usually go to the bottom of my literary pile, since I'm a slow reader and I don't like being tricked into learning things while on vacation.
But "Stiff" by Mary Roach was totally fantastic--- a quick, hilarious page turner which I highly recommend. What's it about? Dead bodies.
Before I started reading I couldn't imagine what could be interesting enough to fill 12 chapters with cadavers. Mary meets people who deal with the dead every day--- researchers, doctors, med students, undertakers, and even forensic anthropologists. They're all very interesting, and the book is about them to some degree. But it's even more about Mary's experience meeting these people, and her paradoxical feelings of squickiness and yet fascination with a topic that is relevant to every single one of us.
Recommended!
(Admittedly, I am not a good judge of whether or not this book is too "gross" for unusually squeamish readers. But I can tell you that it is in no way violent, nor is it disrespectful of the concepts of death, dying, afterlives, religions, etc. Mary does a pretty good job avoiding being gross or disrespectful, even though she is obviously a fearlessly curious person. There's even a paragraph where she pointedly chooses not to use the "unpleasant" word for "baby flies", and instead substitutes, for the benefit of her readers, the much nicer word "hacienda". Insane, but effective.)