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foxmulders's review against another edition
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content, Death, Gore, Blood, Animal cruelty, and Animal death
scarroll178's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
3.0
Very informative. Sometimes the author’s humor rubbed me the wrong way. Other times, she used too much scientific jargon, making some of the book’s concepts difficult for a layperson to understand.
Still, a good book if you want to learn more about what happens to our bodies after we die and what your options are for what happens to yours.
Still, a good book if you want to learn more about what happens to our bodies after we die and what your options are for what happens to yours.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death
mountain_adventures's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
informative
medium-paced
5.0
This is my favorite Mary Roach book as she explores many aspects of cadavers.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death
random19379's review against another edition
dark
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Murder, Death, Gore, Body horror, and Vomit
Moderate: Racism and Classism
kapiolani's review against another edition
dark
informative
slow-paced
1.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Physical abuse, Murder, Medical trauma, Medical content, Death, and Animal death
flyawaybooks's review
challenging
dark
funny
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Death, Gore, and Animal death
cyberhavok's review against another edition
funny
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Medical content
tangleroot_eli's review against another edition
funny
informative
slow-paced
Yet another nonfiction book I should've either read as soon as I put it on my tbr or deleted when I couldn't get to it right away. While some parts were laugh-out-loud funny, some of Stiff's humor has aged poorly. (And some of it I just plain didn't find funny: Roach knows how to set up the joke, but she doesn't always land the punchline.) Also, her 2021 edition epilogue did little to address the ways options for human remains have changed, even just in the US, since the book was first published in 2003.
Most alarming to me, as a death educator, is Roach's insistence that all decisions about a person's remains should be left to the survivors, rather than the deceased. This privileged view ignoresfollowing:
Most alarming to me, as a death educator, is Roach's insistence that all decisions about a person's remains should be left to the survivors, rather than the deceased. This privileged view ignoresfollowing:
- Emotion. When a loved one has just died is a terrible time to make a lot of decisions. Even if you absolutely do not care what happens to your body after you die, even if you genuinely believe it should all be up to your survivors, you need to talk to them about it now (maybe especially if). Tell them that you have no advice for them, and that they need to be thinking about it now so they don't end up making choices they'll regret in those frantic days after your death. The vast majority of people are grateful to know what you would want for yourself. Most of us want to treat our loved ones' remains in ways that honor how that loved one lived and what they wanted for their body in death. Which brings me to...
- Identity. As a nonbinary Pagan, the thought of having no say over what happens to my body after I die is chilling. If my spouse is in charge of my disposition, no worries. If they're unavailable for some reason and it falls to my mom, I will be given a Presbyterian funeral where I will be misgendered and deadnamed throughout. I will be embalmed and buried in a metal coffin, in a vault, possibly in another state. Yeah, I'll be dead and won't know or care what's happening to my remains. But research has started to show that death rituals that erase aspects a person's lived identity, especially aspects that aren't valued by mainstream society, harms people who share that identity. If Mom needs to grieve in a way that erases my religious and gender identities, she can do that on her own time. But it shouldn't be the main funeral my trans and Pagan beloveds have to sit through, and it shouldn't be allowed to carry into other public remembrances of me (obituary, etc.) and certainly not into my disposition. There's a world of difference between "I won't make my husband fulfil my wishes for body donation, because he's squeamish" (although, for realsies, it's not like he would have to dissect her corpse himself) and "we should leave all disposition decisions up to the survivors and that never ends poorly." The fact that Roach seems to neither see nor care about that distinction soured the end of the book for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cannibalism, Animal cruelty, Death, Gore, Animal death, Car accident, and Medical content
Moderate: Gun violence, Blood, Excrement, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Murder, Death of parent, Abortion, Suicide attempt, War, and Suicide
Minor: Ableism, Fire/Fire injury, and Police brutality
plane crash, saneismbambiann's review against another edition
dark
informative
medium-paced
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abortion, Animal death, Death, and Animal cruelty
ren_the_hobbit's review against another edition
They are mostly historical but lots of experiments on animals this book talks about are very cruel and hard to listen to.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Animal death
Moderate: Violence