Reviews tagging 'Death'

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

268 reviews

plasticpansy's review

emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.25

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror and Death

lookingformybookmark's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Death, Suicide, Blood, Medical content, Grief, and Cannibalism

Minor: Animal death, Miscarriage, Excrement, Dementia, Car accident, Abortion, and Pregnancy

sabrinaleaf's review against another edition

dark funny informative medium-paced

4.0

Interesting topic to read about, especially as someone who plans on working in the death industry (coroner to be exact)
The author skillfully delivers fun and humorist stories that deal with such a taboo subject: death.  I love how the author provides criticisms of the industry and actually talks about solutions and changes she wants to make to help solve what she thinks is a problem. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, and Death

lilawsahar's review

dark funny informative lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

I learned so much about the business of dying. I’ll need to create a death plan so my family knows not to use embalming fluids. I wanna decompose the most environment friendly way possible. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Medical content, and Grief

Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide

epellicci's review against another edition

challenging reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Death, Gore, Suicide, Grief, and Death of parent

Minor: Suicide attempt

schlizzzy's review

informative slow-paced

3.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Suicide and Suicide attempt

butlerebecca's review against another edition

dark funny informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Vomit, and Medical content

Moderate: Transphobia

nataliebootlah's review

dark informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

A stark memoir on what happens after death, straight from a mortician. 

The majority of people don’t really talk about what happens to their bodies after they die. It’s a bit taboo, isn’t it? That’s exactly Caitlin Doughty’s point. 

In this lively exploration of death, Doughty shares pointblank what happens in the crematories of the western world: how a body gets picked up, is stored in a fridge, cleaned, fluids removed, embalmed and perfected for presentation, then cremated. With dark humor, this book challenges our cultural aversion to morality and begs us to invite death into our door. By examining death rituals from around the world, both past and present, Doughty’s goal is to desensitize the average human from death. Thus, encouraging people to have more open and honest conversations about death and the wishes people and their loved ones have for after death. 

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes is an unflinchingly, honest read. It invites readers to embrace the inevitability of death, positivity change their relationship with mortality, and challenge the current widespread views of it. It definitely did so for me. But be aware, it is not for the faint of heart. 

Shout out to Walker for recommending this and letting me hold onto it for literal years. The recommendation sure did stand the test of time. Cheers who friends who read together (albeit at different times) and cheers to a good death!

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, and Medical content

Moderate: Miscarriage and Suicide

nadiajohnsonbooks's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny informative medium-paced

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Medical content, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Suicide, Grief, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Drug abuse, Drug use, Miscarriage, Blood, Excrement, and Dementia

siobhanward's review

hopeful informative medium-paced

4.0

Doughty's <i> From Here to Eternity <i/> was one of my favourite reads last year, and I was excited to read this one. While it wasn't quite as strong, I still really enjoyed Doughty's honest voice and the connections she makes to cultures outside of the US. I know how/why the US (and Canadian) burial systems exist and am familiar with rituals around death/dying that are common here. However, that's obviously only one very narrow view of death, and I appreciated Doughty's recognition of others and how US laws need to be amended in order to include more non-Western forms of burial and mourning.

Doughty approaches the topic of death with kindness and presents it in a way that feels so normal and natural that you forget you're reading about death. She speaks kindly in the book about those who are deceased, which I find isn't always the case in these kinds of books. Often these authors become so desensitized to deaths they forget that their audience is not desensitized in the same way (and that their readers may include loved ones of the deceased, who don't want to read crass or offhand comments about them). 

Anyway, Doughty writes about death in a way that really makes a step towards making it not seem terrifying (including talking about things that worry people about death). Honestly, this book was written in a way that make me question if I should have gone into the funerary business as a career (answer: no, I'm far too emotional for that), but she writes about it in a way that makes it sound so important and critical (which is true) that you just want to be a part of it. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Gore