Reviews tagging 'Car accident'

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

22 reviews

teganbeesebooks's review against another edition

funny informative fast-paced

5.0

I would be interested to see an updated edition with how practices have changed in the last 21 years. Super informative and I'm looking forward to reading her other books.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Medical content, Child death, Excrement, Gore, Blood, Cancer, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Terminal illness, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Car accident, Cannibalism, and Vomit

lmneal87's review

challenging funny informative reflective slow-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death, Animal cruelty, Death, Medical trauma, Car accident, Gore, and Cannibalism

klbreyfogle's review

dark funny informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

This was an interesting read! I listened as an audiobook which was fine for the most part but having someone tell you about mellified man directly into your ears is a little jarring. It’s now a little old so if you regularly consume mortuary content (a la Ask a Mortician/Caitlin Doughty) a fair amount will be familiar, but it’s still very informative and the tone is pretty funny, so overall a good read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Medical content, Animal death, Grief, Gore, and Animal cruelty

Moderate: Excrement, Abortion, and Terminal illness

wandering_canuck's review

funny informative medium-paced

3.5

This is my second reading of the book and I found it less intriguing than previously. Roach is a good writer who is adept at delivering death in a way that is neither too depressing nor too blasé. Not for the faint hearted, but even those to whom the idea of death is a bit "icky" will find this a compelling and lighthearted read. I believe I previously rated this 5 stars; my reduced rating is likely due to it being a reread. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Gore, Car accident, Child death, Medical trauma, Blood, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Abortion, and Death

earlgreysnail's review

dark funny informative medium-paced

3.5

Some quite fascinating information you would not normally come upon! Long-winded at times. The animal rights activist in me found some of this super upsetting.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cannibalism, Gore, Physical abuse, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Medical content, Death, Car accident, and Blood

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:

1. 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...
2. 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.

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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, saneism

sierrakilocharlie's review

dark funny informative medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma, Death, and Blood

Moderate: Cannibalism and Car accident

vale_reading's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny informative reflective fast-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Blood, Violence, Animal cruelty, Car accident, Cannibalism, Murder, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, and Death

Moderate: Xenophobia and War

Minor: Suicide and Death of parent

jonie_rich's review against another edition

challenging informative inspiring slow-paced

4.75

I really loved this book, but I had to skip over the parts about the dog surgery (that is putting it sooooooo mildly). I recommend it, and I think it educates a very overlooked part of our lives as humans. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Cannibalism, Child death, Abortion, Suicide attempt, Chronic illness, Child abuse, Suicide, Medical content, Body horror, Blood, Gore, Animal death, Murder, Medical trauma, Torture, Car accident, Animal cruelty, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, and Excrement

heathermarie08's review

informative slow-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Car accident and Body shaming