A review by aghoststory
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

5.0

I am not much a review writer so forgive me. As a fan of her series Ask a Mortician on Youtube, I was so excited to see that she was going release a book. Along with my own curiosity about the funeral industry, death, and anything else that many people would consider to grim to think about, this book shot straight up to the top of my “to read” list. It is a memoir so I expected a lot of how she got into being so death positive and what led her to the career that she has now. As you read, she has all of that covered so never fear, but what else the book has is actually equally interesting. It covers many different topics from how death rituals in other cultures to how society has dealt with death over the centuries. What I found the most interesting, however, was how detached from death the society we live in is. Most of us will go our whole life not thinking about it or questioning it because death is something considered taboo. We assume we have limited options to what our funerals can be like or just leave it for our families to deal with. Not only is that not cool, but it's also no true. We're all going to die so we might as well start thinking about it.
It’s a great, quick read that answers questions that you didn't even know that you had about death. And it is actually quite funny. Read it!