Thanks a lot, Mary Roach, Now I Can't Stop Reading About Dead People

In 2013, I read a book that I haven't stopped thinking about since. That book was Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Seriously, I think about this book all the time. I recommend it several times each year to others with curious minds. I made a significant life choice about my human remains because of this book. I'm not kidding- it made an impact on me!

Stiff opened my eyes to death beyond what I mainly learned from mass media. She made it less scary by helping me understand what happens to the human body once we die. She opened my eyes to the vast possibilities of ways to honor my remains beyond the well-known burial and cremation options. In fact, one option from this book appealed to me so much that I committed to it. It's unconventional but appeals to my need to help others. Honestly, I had no idea that there were options!

Roach is a very remarkable author. She writes about science in a way that is approachable and understandable. She makes it gross. She makes it fun. She makes it interesting. She makes you think, and she leaves you wanting more. Mary doesn't just write about dead people's science. She also writes about sex science, space science, and ghost science, among other things. If you want to try nonfiction that's easy to read, I think Mary would be an excellent choice for you.

And, of course, Mary isn't the only author writing about death. Some of you might recognize Caitlin Doughty from her YouTube fame. She's made an entire career educating us about death and advocating for the positive death movement. She's a very remarkable woman, and I encourage you to read more about her. I've only had the opportunity to read one of her books Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And other Questions about Dead Bodies, but I intend to get through all her books (if it kills me! Ha!).  

The SJR State Library has books from both authors. Give us a call to reserve a copy!

“Death. It doesn't have to be boring.”
― Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

Call Number: Orange Park Circulation RA622.7.D68 A3 2015b

ISBN: 9781594138799

Publication Date: 2015-10-19

An Indie NextA #1 LibraryReads PickMost people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty -- a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre -- took a job at a crematory. Thrown into a profession of gallows humor and vivid characters, Caitlin learned to navigate the secretive culture of those who care for the dead. Her eye-opening, candid, and often hilarious story is like going on a journey with your bravest friend to the cemetery at midnight.

 

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty

Call Number: Orange Park Circulation HQ1073 .D68 2019

ISBN: 9780393652703

Publication Date: 2019-09-10

New York Times Bestseller Winner of the 2019 Goodreads Choice Award for Science & Technology Best-selling author and mortician Caitlin Doughty answers real questions from kids about death, dead bodies, and decomposition. Every day, funeral director Caitlin Doughty receives dozens of questions about death. The best questions come from kids. What would happen to an astronaut's body if it were pushed out of a space shuttle? Do people poop when they die? Can Grandma have a Viking funeral? In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, Doughty blends her mortician's knowledge of the body and the intriguing history behind common misconceptions about corpses to offer factual, hilarious, and candid answers to thirty-five distinctive questions posed by her youngest fans. In her inimitable voice, Doughty details lore and science of what happens to, and inside, our bodies after we die. Why do corpses groan? What causes bodies to turn colors during decomposition? And why do hair and nails appear longer after death? Readers will learn the best soil for mummifying your body, whether you can preserve your best friend's skull as a keepsake, and what happens when you die on a plane. Beautifully illustrated by Dianné Ruz, Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? shows us that death is science and art, and only by asking questions can we begin to embrace it.

 

From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty

Call Number: Orange Park Circulation RA622 .D68 2017

ISBN: 9780393249897

Publication Date: 2017-10-03

A New York Times and Los Angeles Times Bestseller The best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with "dignity." Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Here to Eternity is an immersive global journey that introduces compelling, powerful rituals almost entirely unknown in America. In rural Indonesia, she watches a man clean and dress his grandfather's mummified body, which has resided in the family home for two years. In La Paz, she meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls), and in Tokyo she encounters the Japanese kotsuage ceremony, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved-ones' bones from cremation ashes. With boundless curiosity and gallows humor, Doughty vividly describes decomposed bodies and investigates the world's funerary history. She introduces deathcare innovators researching body composting and green burial, and examines how varied traditions, from Mexico's Días de los Muertos to Zoroastrian sky burial help us see our own death customs in a new light. Doughty contends that the American funeral industry sells a particular--and, upon close inspection, peculiar--set of "respectful" rites: bodies are whisked to a mortuary, pumped full of chemicals, and entombed in concrete. She argues that our expensive, impersonal system fosters a corrosive fear of death that hinders our ability to cope and mourn. By comparing customs, she demonstrates that mourners everywhere respond best when they help care for the deceased, and have space to participate in the process. Exquisitely illustrated by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity is an adventure into the morbid unknown, a story about the many fascinating ways people everywhere have confronted the very human challenge of mortality.

 

Stiff by Mary Roach

Call Number: Orange Park Circulation R853.H8 R635 2004

ISBN: 0393324826

Publication Date: 2004-05-17

"One of the funniest and most unusual books of the year....Gross, educational, and unexpectedly sidesplitting."--Entertainment Weekly Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers--some willingly, some unwittingly--have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Call Number: Palatka Circulation QH327 .R63 2010

ISBN: 9780393068474

Publication Date: 2010-08-02

The best-selling author of Stiff and Bonk explores the irresistibly strange universe of space travel and life without gravity. Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can't walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space simulations. As Mary Roach discovers, it's possible to preview space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA's new space capsule (cadaver filling in for astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth.

 

Fuzz by Mary Roach

Call Number: Palatka Circulation QL85 .R623 2021

ISBN: 9781324001935

Publication Date: 2021-09-14

What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology. Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter's Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque. Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature's lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem--and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.