Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

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

110 reviews

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

mleigh11's review

challenging dark emotional informative lighthearted reflective medium-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Suicide, Blood, Medical content, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail

emjayknocks's review against another edition

challenging dark informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.25

A poignant and informative reflection on modern death practices in the Western world. I appreciated the anchoring explorations about other cultures’ death practices, and I would’ve liked to have learned more! I will check out the author’s other books in the hopes that she goes deeper into that subject elsewhere.

I also appreciated the unflinching and detailed explanations of what happens to our bodies once they arrive at the morgue. I always thought embalming was creepy and this book helped me understand why; I am now inspired to give my body back to the animals after my death! Sadly this book hasn’t made me less terrified of being dead… I’ll keep reading books on the subject and hope for the best 😅

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, and Medical content

mirandaleighhhh's review against another edition

funny informative medium-paced

4.0

This year I'm reading more about grief, death, and dying to try to confront and make peace with my death anxiety. Off the heels of Staring at the Sun by Irvin Yalom (which I did not care for) this was fantastic. I want to pick up a physical copy so I can annotate the parts I found most comforting and inspiring. 

It was also pretty gross! But no grosser, I think, than being alive and having a body. I was surprised to hear that there are death industry "secrets" - WHY? I whole-heartedly agree that the stark separation we have from death in the modern day is a tragic disservice to us all. This book reminded me that I am a person and an animal and part of the earth, and I have a place in it all both in life and in death. I look forward to reading more of Doughty's work.  

I didn't love the way she spoke about individuals who have died by suicide, but I don't think it was malicious and I did not get the impression that she is insensitive or uncaring - more the opposite. She is both giving it to us straight and weaving in her own anxieties surrounding death.

"In this way, my body's decomposition would also be a banquet. My corpse would not be a disgusting source of corruption, but a source of life, dispensing molecules and creating new creatures. It would be the finest acknowledgement that I was but one tiny cog in the ecosystems wheel. A blip in the majestic workings of the natural world. We all know how this story turned out. In spite of my fear of living, I chose not to die."

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, and Medical content

inthemoonlight's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny informative reflective medium-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Medical content, and Car accident

Moderate: Cannibalism and Suicide attempt

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.

pandaintheshelves's review

funny informative reflective

5.0

A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves. It's like a virginity, your first time is awkward, you're not really sure what to do, and it's over before you know it. But with each subsequent corpse, you learn a little more, make fewer mistakes, and figure out how to find pleasure in the little things

This is one of the best first lines I've ever read 😅

If someone had told me a month ago that a non-fiction book would make me laugh and cry to the same extent, I wouldn’t have believed them.

I wish this author were my professor because she made learning about end-of-life rituals and customs fun without being disrespectful or emotionally detached.

Brace yourself, this is not for the faint of heart. It also may be particularly difficult for people who've experienced a recent loss ⚠️ Be mindful of your mental health and check the content warnings, please. That's the most important thing 🙏

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Terminal illness, and Medical content

Moderate: Child death and Cannibalism

veeples's review against another edition

emotional funny informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

This has been one of my favorite reads all year, hands down. I’ve followed Caitlin Doughty on her YouTube channel for years and I’m so glad I got around to listening to this book. Caitlin’s humor shines through that adds a bit of lightness to such heavy material, but not inappropriately so. I enjoyed seeing her journey in her relationship to death and her reflections on others’ who appear in the book and their own relationship with death. I’ve always had an appreciation for what she stands for in regards to agency in dying and opening up a conversation about death, and reading this has only deepened that.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Death, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Medical content, Grief, Suicide attempt, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Cancer, Dementia, Cannibalism, Car accident, and Abortion

iloponis's review against another edition

3.0

kind of delightful and also disgusting

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, and Medical content