Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

58 reviews

audiobookish's review

3.75

challenging dark slow-paced

---

It’s dark, morbid, and macabre. But it changed the way I think about death and the body afterward. Interesting read. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Death, Gore, Blood, Medical content, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail

smudgebeeb's review

5.0

dark funny informative fast-paced

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail

clovetra's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark funny informative medium-paced

---

yet again online user clover goes wild for weird books about dead bodies 🔥🔥🔥 seriously if i could actually do med school in terms of the workload and content (i am so bad at chemistry and physics) i would want to do it and be like a coroner. seriously i love the science behind dead bodies. that sounds insane but i cant explain it any other way. i’ve done a handful of wet labs and im so serious i go crazy its so interesting especially when you can see individual differences in specimens. like i had one where you could see my cow was over fed grass specifically based on how certain structures in the brain looked. like that’s so intriguing to me.

holy air ball that’s a tangent. but all that’s to say i love topics like this. this book was my wet dream (pun intended cuz… get it… wet lab… wet… dream… i’ll see myself out). 

i learnt so fucking much from this book it’s crazy. shout-out the mass murdering of guinea pigs and human dumpling conspiracy 🔥 i’d have to say my favourite chapter was easily the first few following cadaver’s use in anatomy labs and/or for surgeons to use to hone in their techniques. super interesting to me (take a shot every time i say “interesting” because i can’t think of a better adjective)

ANYWAAYYY i did really like this book but. there’s a lot of random interviews and side quests. i mean yeah some of the interviews then added credence to the history roach provided, but i would’ve preferred a lot more of the history rather than her shooting a fake human leg or something. the first couple of chapters were set up perfectly to my liking, but idk the further the book progressed the less i liked the style in which information was conveyed. also at some times the comedy was… too much. yes there needs to be some lighthearted tone so this isn’t a dry ass book but at some times it was too much and took away from the book. it became a bit exhausting honestly and i was tired of it by the last handful of chapters. otherwise, i do think this book was great and i learnt a lot! it’s just the style and tone sometimes irked me a little bit. but i still think this is a worthwhile read, and im defo gonna consider donating my body to science even if in death a bunch of plastic surgeons use me to practice giving people BBLs or they throw my body off buildings to see the damage to my body or they leave me naked at the back of a university campus to see how i decompose. fuck it what else am i gonna do with my body. I’m Dead. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Blood, Medical content

Moderate: Cannibalism, Injury/Injury detail

oddskyla's review against another edition

4.0

dark funny fast-paced

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Medical content, Cannibalism, Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Excrement

znvisser's review against another edition

4.0

dark informative reflective medium-paced

---

I like reading about medical history and sometimes that veers into the more morbid stories; I was fascinated by this book from the moment I found it. The author combines several perspectives around the human cadaver, making up for an interesting roundup. I learned a lot from this! I also liked how it reflected on the language used around the bodies, their parts and what happened to them; interestingly, this tends to differ from profession to profession.

I preferred the first three chapters, that covered research purposes around surgery, anatomy and decomposing. Maybe because they came closest to what I expected from this. Maybe, because firing bullets at a cadaver isn’t all that interesting anymore after reading about gory body farms. And maybe, because at some point in this book it was barely about human cadavers anymore. Somewhere halfway, the testing on animals really got out of hand and it appeared the author relished in providing all details. Although I knew of some of these examples, having recently read a different story on (the history of) organ donation, the approach here was a bit much for my vegan ass. Also no longer really enjoyed the jokes, because cruel experiments like attaching an extra head to an already complete dog aren’t really funny to me (this was supposed to be about cadavers, not living animals). I was happy to move on from this part of the book and diving into getting rid of our remains.

So although I would have preferred at some points to focus more on the human body than on some of the exact details of what preceded it all, I was still intrigued by a lot of it. The research done for this is elaborate, including lots of literature and field work by the author, and for most of it the style added a nice touch, to keep this from being either too dry or scientific. It’s an old one tho, I wonder what updates could be added in the +20 years since this has been first published (I read the 2003 edition but if I understand correctly the 2021 one only differs in epilogue?).

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Gore, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Cannibalism, Car accident, Murder

Minor: Grief, Abortion

ambaright's review against another edition

3.0

dark funny informative medium-paced

---

I listened to this as an audiobook for the Morbidly Curious Book Club May 2025 pick. Personally, it is not my vein of morbidly curious topics… however, I will say it was highly informative, funny, and I found Chapter 4: Dead Man Driving and Chapter 5: Beyond the Black Box to be the most interesting chapters to me. For those interested - or should I say, curious - in knowing more about cadavers and various stories and antidotes told in a humorous tone, I’d recommend checking this collection out!

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Excrement, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail

devynreadsnovels's review against another edition

4.0

dark funny informative reflective medium-paced

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Cancer, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail

beebowbabe's review against another edition

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Death, Gore, Blood, Excrement, Medical content

Moderate: Chronic illness, Grief, Cannibalism, Car accident, Abortion

Minor: Cancer, Confinement, Drug use, Gun violence, Suicide, Terminal illness, Trafficking, Car accident, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, War, Injury/Injury detail

oprah_wimpy's review against another edition

4.5

dark reflective medium-paced

---

What an interesting book! You can certainly tell this is well researched and informed. The author even brings a levity and at time humor to such a heavy topic. Really enjoyed it.  

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Death, Gore, Blood, Medical content, Cannibalism, Injury/Injury detail

carrietherose's review against another edition

5.0

emotional funny informative reflective fast-paced

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Death, Gore, Blood, Medical content, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Grief, Cannibalism, Car accident, Death of parent

Minor: Mental illness