Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

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

125 reviews

nadiajohnsonbooks's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny informative medium-paced

4.0

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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

haleyhorrorshow's review

dark emotional funny hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

"Sifting through an urn of cremated remains you cannot tell if a person had successes, failures, grandchildren, felonies."

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Medical content, and Grief

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Cannibalism, and Death of parent

Minor: Cancer, Violence, Vomit, and Car accident

rabbithalliwell's review

challenging emotional inspiring reflective

4.5

Content warnings only due to the fact that the whole book is about death and our perception of it. Caitlin approaches all topics with honesty and care.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror, Cancer, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Blood, Medical content, Dementia, Car accident, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

jlblumenfeld's review against another edition

dark emotional funny hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death and Death

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts

kamrynkoble's review against another edition

dark funny informative medium-paced

4.5

What a fascinating read! I listened to the audio, read by the author. While this book does detail/explain much of the process after death (especially cremation), the author’s musings on how we view death as a culture was even more interesting to me. She has a fresh, dark sense of humor without being offensive/insensitive. 

Heavy warnings for death (of a parent and infant death specifically, too). I didn’t find the details disturbing or disgusting (then again, I’ve seen a lot of horrible photos of dead bodies from my 911 dispatching days, so maybe I’m not the best reference).

All-in-all an interesting, engaging read that flew by. I’d never engaged with this author before but now I’m excited to check out her videos as well. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, and Death of parent

maxthefish's review

challenging informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Addiction, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide attempt

breadbummer's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Grief, Cannibalism, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Fatphobia, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Car accident, Pregnancy, and Colonisation

Minor: Sexual content

nikenacs's review against another edition

funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.75

I picked this up not thinking much of it, both because I'd had a recent death in my family and because my local library was offering the e-book. And man, I'm so happy I read this. It took me a while to get into it, but when I did, I was INTO IT.

The ins and outs of the crematorium are interesting enough, but the true strength of this book is in its reflections on our society's attitude towards death. Absolutely 10/10 on that front. As someone who has had little to no contact with death in my personal life, this gave me a lot to think about. 

Very US-centric, which is not a bad thing, but instead made me very curious to research how the funeral industry works in Germany, and Western Europe in general. 

A tad superficial at times, oftentimes a chapter ended just when I felt like we were really getting into it. I appreciate that it combined more light-hearted personal memoir elements with philosophy and history as well as politics, but it could have been a tad more of the latter for my taste. 

But all in all, I'm not being hyperbolic when I say this opened my eyes on how we treat both our dead and our dying.  Will be recommending, will be checking out more of Doughty's work. 

(And on a personal note, I knew I was right when I wanted to set up my testament and funeral wishes when I was in elementary school! Take that, parents.) 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Vomit, Car accident, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Cancer, Fatphobia, Terminal illness, Violence, and Cannibalism

Minor: Addiction, Miscarriage, and Abortion

emoopossum's review

dark emotional informative medium-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Suicidal thoughts

angorarabbit's review against another edition

dark funny hopeful informative lighthearted reflective sad slow-paced

3.5

Context:  I have been following Ms Doughty’s YouTube channel for a few years now, it’s about time I read her first book. 

 

This is mainly a memoir and I am not qualified to judge Ms Doughty’s life. Her writing style is bright and breezy even when talking about serious things. That is not to say that she makes light of her topics, she absolutely does not. She sounds like the type of funeral director I wish my mother had talked to when choosing the casket for my grandfather. 

 

There has been many deaths in my life, human and non-human animals. And I have been watching the videos so the message of the book was something I was familiar with already. I can see that it would be very helpful for those who are having their first encounter with the US funeral industry. 

 

One of my fears about death is the mess someone or other will have to clean up. I would be happy if my cats could eat not just my eyeballs but the rest of me as well, leaving a nice clean skeleton to put in some anatomy lab somewhere. While it does not seem like putting bodies in the forest for the bear, wolf, and mountain lion to consume willt be feasible (at least not legally) in the near future, I hope  Ms Doughty and others will make a future in the US where loved ones are not pressured to go into debt while their grief is still fresh and where everyone can grieve as they need too.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Blood, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Cannibalism, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Car accident

Graphic descriptions of the process of cremation, embalming, and other funeral practices.