Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Composition of Decomposition

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: & Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

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Last time you, me, and the other Caitlin who spells her name correctly met up, I was asking about what you wanted to happen to your body when you died. Remember?  A good time was had by all. This time I am not going to ask what you want to happen, because while Smoke Gets in Your Eyes does talk about what one can choose for their post-mortem adventures, it also gives a breakdown (cymbal crash) of what happens to a human body when it stops being […]

Kids ask the darnedest things about decomposing bodies

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death by Caitlin Doughty

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I am always on the lookout for science-y books that make science accessible to literature majors like myself. Bonus points if the topic is slightly quirky, such as brain abnormalities, digestive processes, or corpses. Because I’m a lucky gal, my husband also stays on the lookout for these types of books, and for Christmas he bought me Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? (Eat your hearts out, ladies!) I wasn’t familiar with Caitlin Doughty, but I soon learned that she is a New York Times best-selling […]

“All that surrounds us comes from death, every part of every city, and every part of every person.” (CBR10Bingo)

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Two years ago I read and truly enjoyed Caitlin Doughty’s debut book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, which chronicled her journey from someone curious about the business of death into an advocate for seeking out what she terms “the good death” and changing the funerary business as it is now in the United States.  Besides being an interesting story about her life, the book is basically a treatise about making death a part of your life, of staring down your fears and accepting that death […]



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