Book Review for Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Strange how some books just pop out at you, STIFF jumped out to me as if it had come alive. I normally do not enjoy reading about the dead and death, I’m more of a murder and find the criminal type reader. However the cover drew me in so started the adventure about cadavers and what actually happens to dead bodies. This book caught my morbid fascination with the dead and death. Click to purchase Stiff on Amazon
I felt similar to this quote in the book page by page I felt like I was getting unzipped “He is unzipping her like a parka”.
Roach writes with a touch of humor and really keeps you drawn in wanting to learn more about what happens to head, heart, lungs, ears, toes, and so on. I have previously thought I would like to donate my body to science, however that will not happen after reading STIFF. I loved this book it was actually educational and funny all in one.
I quote this paragraph, because I think it really sums up how I feel – about donating organs and people who oppose it.
This was possibly one of my favorite lines of the book, it really makes you think. Your body can really save so many lives. “It is astounding to me, and achingly sad, that with eighty thousand people on the waiting list for donated hearts and livers and kidneys, with sixteen a day dying there on that list, that more than half of the people in the position H’s family was in will say no, will choose to burn those organs or let them rot. We abide the surgeon’s scalpel to save our own lives, out loved ones’ lives, but not to save a stranger’s life. H has no heart, but heartless is the last thing you’d call her.”
This book was both a fascinating and a gruesome read. I really enjoyed the mix of fact and humor. Mary Roach seemed to be giving a first-hand experience in this book.
Thinking of donating your body to science? Well, this book might make you want to reconsider
Click to purchase Stiff on Amazon
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.
“One of the funniest and most unusual books of the year….Gross, educational, and unexpectedly sidesplitting.”―Entertainment Weekly
