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Reviews tagging 'Addiction'
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
26 reviews
maxthefish's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Addiction, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide attempt
breadbummer's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Grief, Cannibalism, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Addiction, Fatphobia, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Car accident, Pregnancy, and Colonisation
Minor: Sexual content
nikenacs's review against another edition
4.75
The ins and outs of the crematorium are interesting enough, but the true strength of this book is in its reflections on our society's attitude towards death. Absolutely 10/10 on that front. As someone who has had little to no contact with death in my personal life, this gave me a lot to think about.
Very US-centric, which is not a bad thing, but instead made me very curious to research how the funeral industry works in Germany, and Western Europe in general.
A tad superficial at times, oftentimes a chapter ended just when I felt like we were really getting into it. I appreciate that it combined more light-hearted personal memoir elements with philosophy and history as well as politics, but it could have been a tad more of the latter for my taste.
But all in all, I'm not being hyperbolic when I say this opened my eyes on how we treat both our dead and our dying. Will be recommending, will be checking out more of Doughty's work.
(And on a personal note, I knew I was right when I wanted to set up my testament and funeral wishes when I was in elementary school! Take that, parents.)
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Vomit, Car accident, and Suicide attempt
Moderate: Cancer, Fatphobia, Terminal illness, Violence, and Cannibalism
Minor: Addiction, Miscarriage, and Abortion
harrimyers's review against another edition
4.25
Graphic: Cancer, Child death, Death, Suicide, Terminal illness, Blood, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Panic attacks/disorders, and Car accident
Minor: Cultural appropriation and Colonisation
alicroz34's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Child death, Death, Medical content, and Grief
Moderate: Addiction, Miscarriage, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Excrement, Dementia, Cannibalism, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Addiction, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, and Sexism
just_jeffrey0597's review against another edition
5.0
Moderate: Addiction, Cancer, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Dementia, Grief, Cannibalism, and Death of parent
cadence99's review against another edition
2.5
•the discussion of death practices in various cultures
•the authors personal musings on how best to manage the image and processing of death
What I didn’t like:
•chapters feel a bit disjointed in their themes
•the repeated use of race as a descriptor for ONLY non-white people when it is irrelevant to the narrative of the story being told
•pretty gross anti-fat comments, primarily in one particular section where she talks about her coworker declaring that despite the medical examiners determination to the contrary, the person MUST have died of a heart attack from being so fat and “This is why you can’t be fat!”- in addition to describing in great detail how fat bodies smell worse, but then dismissing the coworkers comments as “just fact” (even though he is literally ignoring fact by assuming the mans cause of death is not the one determined by the examiners professional assessment)
• in the same scene as above, repeatedly bringing up how her coworkers continually mistakenly say the person is Mexican, despite him being Salvadoran
•irrelevant added story where a coworker says they should fire bomb the city of San Francisco because it is a “hell pit”
Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Body horror, Cancer, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Fatphobia, Gore, Gun violence, Infertility, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Racism, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Car accident, Abortion, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail
leweylibrary's review against another edition
4.75
Overall this book is a lot of morbid, informative fun! I feel like it's made me think about death and dying in an entirely different way--I already caught myself while watching the new Hunger Games prequel thinking about the dead bodies of the fallen tributes and how decomposed they must have been lol. It also connected some dots for me about past experiences concerning death. I had always thought I was uncomfortable with the first funeral I ever went to just because it was my first funeral, but I think I really was uncomfortable with the unnatural-ness of that funeral, how my great aunt didn't look like her anymore and she didn't look...dead enough to be dead.
I really want an updated version of this book--surely there are more "green" burial options now 10 years later? I also went ahead and put holds on all of the author's other books. Not only do I love the subject matter she focuses on, but I love her writing. She reminds me of Jenny Lawson with how deep and personal she can get but then also crack a weird, inappropriate joke in the next breath lol.
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Mental illness and Dementia
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cancer, Chronic illness, Drug abuse, and Terminal illness
indieandajean's review
5.0
I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was untrue and that this book was not only extremely well written, but was the key to understanding why Caitlin's death fascination began and how she used her experiences to start the order. This book is a fantastic piece of memoir, and it is also a great place for the uninitiated to start when learning more about the good death and the ways in which we can begin to challenge the funeral industry as it exists today.
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Grief, and Death of parent
Moderate: Addiction, Cancer, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Animal death
aquakirst's review against another edition
4.75
Graphic: Child death, Death, Blood, Medical content, and Death of parent
Moderate: Addiction, Gore, Dementia, Medical trauma, and Classism
Minor: Excrement