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abookperson's review against another edition
4.0
My favourite quotes:
'The Bay's current fulfilled feminist Camille Paglia's lament: "Human beings are not nature's favourites. We are merely one of a multitude of species upon which nature indiscriminately exerts its force."'
'Bodies cremated in full, heads donated to science, babies, and some woman's amputated leg all come out looking the same in the end. Sifting through an urn of cremated remains you cannot tell if a person had successes, failures, grandchildren, felonies. "For you are dust, and to dust you shall return." As an adult human, your dust is the same as my dust, four to seven pounds of greyish ash and bone.'
'In many ways, women are death's natural companions. Every time a woman gives birth, she is creating not only a life, but also a death. Samuel Beckett wrote that women "give birth astride of a grave." Mother Nature is indeed a real mother, creating and destroying in a constant loop.'
'Death might appear to destroy the meaning in our lives, but in fact it is the very source of our creativity. As Kafka said, "The meaning of life is that it ends." Death is the engine that keeps us running, giving us the motivation to achieve, learn, love, and create. Philosophers have proclaimed this for thousands of years just as vehemently as we insist upon ignoring it generation after generation. Isaac was getting his PhD, exploring the boundaries of science, making music because of the inspiration death provided. If he lived forever, chances are he would be rendered boring, listless, and unmotivated, robbed of life's richness by dull routine. The great achievements of humanity were born out of the deadlines imposed by death. He didn't seem to realise the fire beneath his ass was mortality-the very thing he was attempting to defeat.'
'At the moment I was alive with blood coursing through my veins, floating above the putrefaction below, many potential tomorrows on my mind. Yes, my projects could lie fragmented and unfinished after my death. Unable to choose how I would die physically, I could only choose how I would die mentally. Whether my mortality caught me at twenty-eight or ninety-three, I made the choice to die content, slipped into the nothingness, my atoms becoming the very fog that cloaked the trees. The silence of death, of the cemetery, was no punishment, but a reward for a life well lived.'
I WILL READ THIS BOOK AGAIN.
Moderate: Body horror, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Mental illness, Grief, and Gore
Minor: Dementia and Terminal illness
margtherock's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Death and Gore
Moderate: Grief
Minor: Suicide and Suicide attempt
lailams's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death of parent, Death, Excrement, Grief, and Suicidal thoughts
Moderate: Vomit and Gore
kb_sherman's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Death of parent, Dementia, Drug abuse, Grief, Medical content, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Addiction, Blood, Cancer, Suicide attempt, and Injury/Injury detail
elizlizabeth's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Cannibalism, Child death, Death, Fire/Fire injury, and Grief
Moderate: Suicide, Terminal illness, Abandonment, Addiction, Drug abuse, and Drug use
Minor: Vomit, Trafficking, Cancer, and Miscarriage
jewelboops's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Death, Child death, Suicide, Grief, Terminal illness, and Body horror
aquakerwitch's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, and Body horror
Moderate: Body shaming and Fatphobia
jenniferlynnkrohn's review against another edition
3.0
Graphic: Body horror, Death, and Grief
hmatt's review against another edition
3.5
I mostly appreciate when the author narrates their own non-fiction work, and that holds true here. I mostly appreciated it. But I felt as though some of the narration was stilted. The same inflections that work in the author's online videos don't always work in the context of narrating a book, and it's very clear at times which of these the author is more used to.
All that said - it was a solid read about a topic that I haven't seen a lot written on. It just lacked that extra "oomph".
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Car accident, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Dementia, Grief, Medical content, Suicidal thoughts, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Gore
Minor: Drug use
zarazim's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Grief and Death
Moderate: Child death, Gore, and Fatphobia
Minor: Blood, Cannibalism, Car accident, Terminal illness, Suicide, Miscarriage, Medical trauma, Medical content, Drug abuse, Addiction, Cancer, and Death of parent