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bookishwendy's review against another edition
4.0
If you are a slightly macabre person who might visit a place like London only to wonder "has anyone ever jumped off the Monument?" or "how much truth is there to this Sweeney Todd legend?" or "just how DID the average bodysnatcher steal a corpse and sneak it into the backdoor to the local College for Barber-Surgeons?", well roll up your sleeves and have fun with this one. I sure did. 90% of your morbid curiosity shall be sated, I assure you. Some of the most interesting chapters cover the insanity that was the Victorian funeral industry (some of which survives to this day), strange/obscure monuments, and of course medical- (and money-) motivated body-snatching in the days before donating your body to science was an accepted course of action.
Pretty much everything here is rooted in historical evidence. It's not collection of ghost stories and word-of-mouth legends (though there may be a few)--I pictured the author strolling about the more obscure churches and boneyards of the city, rooting about in forgotten record books and antique broadsheets searching for weird facts that had long been overlooked, but that might be worth remembering. For example, the delightful poem about a woman's ghost lamenting she can't give her hand or heart to her lover--not just because she's dead, but because the medical community has divided her up among them.
There are a lot of (mostly fascinating) anecdotes here, but the author takes care to point the reader toward other sources that cover some of the topics with more depth. I did stumble occasionally on clunky (or missing) transitions, and found by the end that some of the information began to repeat itself, but for the most part I couldn't put it down. Because putting it down would mean going to sleep. In the dark.
Having made the questionable (and macabre) decision to read this book alongside [b:Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers|32145|Stiff The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers|Mary Roach|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347656489s/32145.jpg|1188203], I must admit that I had a rather sleepless weekend.
Pretty much everything here is rooted in historical evidence. It's not collection of ghost stories and word-of-mouth legends (though there may be a few)--I pictured the author strolling about the more obscure churches and boneyards of the city, rooting about in forgotten record books and antique broadsheets searching for weird facts that had long been overlooked, but that might be worth remembering. For example, the delightful poem about a woman's ghost lamenting she can't give her hand or heart to her lover--not just because she's dead, but because the medical community has divided her up among them.
There are a lot of (mostly fascinating) anecdotes here, but the author takes care to point the reader toward other sources that cover some of the topics with more depth. I did stumble occasionally on clunky (or missing) transitions, and found by the end that some of the information began to repeat itself, but for the most part I couldn't put it down. Because putting it down would mean going to sleep. In the dark.
Having made the questionable (and macabre) decision to read this book alongside [b:Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers|32145|Stiff The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers|Mary Roach|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347656489s/32145.jpg|1188203], I must admit that I had a rather sleepless weekend.
amalia1985's review against another edition
1.0
"London, City of the Dead"...Are you excited by the title? You must be. I fell victim to it and wasted hours of my life reading this book. I try to read everything I can find about London and the cover of the book was calling to me. Yes, well, I should have sealed my ears with wax like Odysseus on his ship...How can someone choose to write about one of the most intriguing, haunting cities of the Earth in connection to Death, monuments, cemeteries, strange cases of mortality, ghosts, murder and mayhem and turn it all into an endless feast of snooze and boredom? I don't know, this must be a true achievement.....
This book reminded me of the textbooks we used in university. The writing was uninspired, blant, awful. There were typos, paragraphs where they shouldn't have been and my overall feeling was that it was in desperate need of an editor. I couldn't bring myself to read the last three chapters, I've had enough. Reading about places I have visited and seeing them treated in such a distant, cold way made me furious.
If you enjoy dry, cold writing, give it a try. However, there are many books on the subject
that are much more interesting and written with spirit and panache. This one, though...Even Wikipedia articles are more exciting....Even the dead have more life in them...
This book reminded me of the textbooks we used in university. The writing was uninspired, blant, awful. There were typos, paragraphs where they shouldn't have been and my overall feeling was that it was in desperate need of an editor. I couldn't bring myself to read the last three chapters, I've had enough. Reading about places I have visited and seeing them treated in such a distant, cold way made me furious.
If you enjoy dry, cold writing, give it a try. However, there are many books on the subject
that are much more interesting and written with spirit and panache. This one, though...Even Wikipedia articles are more exciting....Even the dead have more life in them...
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