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3.68k reviews for:
From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
Caitlin Doughty
4.32 AVERAGE
3.68k reviews for:
From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
Caitlin Doughty
4.32 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
medium-paced
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This book easily gets a five star rating from me. The author brought me to places I could not have imagined existed and helped me understand how different cultures around the world honour their dead. It made me realise that not everyone view death as final. The Torajans, for example, whom the author covers extensively in the book, merely see death as sleep. I loved the peppering of humour and authenticity in the chapters. At the end of it all, it made me reflect deeply of how I have seen death in my own country, which, due to its urban settings, conduct industrialised cremations and is now in the midst of disinterring thousands of graves to clear precious land for housing estates. I highly recommend this book for those who wish to demystify death.
adventurous
dark
informative
inspiring
informative
reflective
slow-paced
This is a very thought provoking look at death through memoir and other cultural death practices. I really enjoyed the book and found it an interesting take on how funerals and death are viewed around the world.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm terrified of mortality-not as a concept for living things as a whole, but the whole process of grieving the short fragility of life when you lose loved ones or people who are actually close to you. In real life I close up and numb myself which is why I probably find it safer to process these macabre feelings and morbid fascinations through second hand experiences like literature and film.
I found it curious though, for a book thoroughly centering around death, it barely seemed to be about the ugly emotions surrounding grief and the terrible ways it manifests. The tone it took was more dripping with playful gallows humour and gleaming fascination for the diversity of death practices around the world. It saddened me to know how deeply commercialised and sterilised even deaths and funerals are in USA where grieving families are forced to quickly make difficult decisions about the dead even as they're dealing with such a terrible situation, forced to keep themselves together. Grief is shameful in many parts of the world and you're expected to deal with it quietly and move on.
Of all the death practices mentioned, I was particularly taken with the quiet intimacy of the Japanese one of picking up the bones of the deceased from the ashes with chopsticks and transferring them to an urn. I also found it amusing how in true Japanese fashion they married the old with the new and how 80's tinged futuristic technology plays an important part in funeral homes there. I adored the sky funerals of the Tibetans the most, I think, where the flesh is carried up into the sky to be eaten by mammoth vultures with nine foot wingspans.
I was also devastated to learn that Bio Urns were basically a scam, capitalising on the beautiful intent of contributing to the circle of life, but ultimately useless.
Although I appreciate this book, I think because of the limited perspective of the author combined with a limited page count, nuances of these cultures and practices may be lost without me knowing of it. There was a particular instance of a throwaway line where the author says that in India the death practice is for family members to transport dead bodies to a row of cremation pyres along the banks of the Ganges River but like... We don't all live near the Ganges yo! And there various different folkloric/ tribal traditions here as well that are equally valuable in building up the tapestry of the culture surrounding death here.
I think books like these (Homo Sapiens is another book that comes to mind) are to simply offer laypersons shallow windows into subjects that claim to be a one stop shop overview-and if you're truly interested, you go forward into more and more detail by taking your own initiative for research.
If you liked the subjects that this book tackled, I would recommend the Japanese film "Departures" as a companion piece to it.
I found it curious though, for a book thoroughly centering around death, it barely seemed to be about the ugly emotions surrounding grief and the terrible ways it manifests. The tone it took was more dripping with playful gallows humour and gleaming fascination for the diversity of death practices around the world. It saddened me to know how deeply commercialised and sterilised even deaths and funerals are in USA where grieving families are forced to quickly make difficult decisions about the dead even as they're dealing with such a terrible situation, forced to keep themselves together. Grief is shameful in many parts of the world and you're expected to deal with it quietly and move on.
Of all the death practices mentioned, I was particularly taken with the quiet intimacy of the Japanese one of picking up the bones of the deceased from the ashes with chopsticks and transferring them to an urn. I also found it amusing how in true Japanese fashion they married the old with the new and how 80's tinged futuristic technology plays an important part in funeral homes there. I adored the sky funerals of the Tibetans the most, I think, where the flesh is carried up into the sky to be eaten by mammoth vultures with nine foot wingspans.
I was also devastated to learn that Bio Urns were basically a scam, capitalising on the beautiful intent of contributing to the circle of life, but ultimately useless.
Although I appreciate this book, I think because of the limited perspective of the author combined with a limited page count, nuances of these cultures and practices may be lost without me knowing of it. There was a particular instance of a throwaway line where the author says that in India the death practice is for family members to transport dead bodies to a row of cremation pyres along the banks of the Ganges River but like... We don't all live near the Ganges yo! And there various different folkloric/ tribal traditions here as well that are equally valuable in building up the tapestry of the culture surrounding death here.
I think books like these (Homo Sapiens is another book that comes to mind) are to simply offer laypersons shallow windows into subjects that claim to be a one stop shop overview-and if you're truly interested, you go forward into more and more detail by taking your own initiative for research.
If you liked the subjects that this book tackled, I would recommend the Japanese film "Departures" as a companion piece to it.
informative
reflective
medium-paced