Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Death is the engine that keeps us running, giving us the motivation to achieve, learn, love, and create.”

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

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CBR17 Bingo: Review – I first came across Caitlin Doughty and her books through numerous reviewers on Goodreads. Caitlin Doughty had been long fascinated with death, but when she started working at a crematory, she soon found herself more interested in the question of why death in America has become so distant from the general public. I am maybe not the right audience for Doughty’s message about the loss of intimacy and ritual in the American way of death. I am a Hindu, and we […]

Little Humans Have Questions About Death, A Mortician Answers Them

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies by Caitlin Doughty

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It’s a legitimate question for pet owners – will my cat or dog eat my body if I die in the house? Or, what actually happens when you’re cremated? Maybe you’re curious why bodies are buried six feet deep? Well, Caitlin Doughty – she of Ask a Mortician fame – has answers for you in this funny and informative book. The series of essays are all answering questions posed to her by children who, for those who don’t know, have a morbid streak a mile […]

Sometimes YouTube leads to books!

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty

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Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? By Caitlin Doughty Caitlin Doughty is a mortician/funeral home director, and a YouTube content creator (but not the bad kind.)  She posts videos about death – her channel is called “Ask a Mortician.”  I’m not sure how the YouTube algorithm got me there, but one of Caitlin Doughty’s videos popped up on my recommended video list one day, and so I watched it.  And then I proceeded to binge watch most of her videos that weekend.  (That’s a LOT […]

“A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves.”

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

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Last year, I fell off the CBR wagon when COVID shut down all of our libraries and I was unaccustomed to actually buying books. Then I may have forgotten to return the books I already had out and accrued a fine. So I started 2021 determined to complete a 52 book Cannonball but obliged to pay for books until I settled my library account. Without the luxury of picking ten books and being free to abandon anything that didn’t work out in the first chapter, […]

A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

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A memoir turned polemic turned treatise about death in the United States, this book begins with the narrator, Caitlin Doughty leaving college with a degree in Medieval Studies (focusing on death and death rituals) and taking a job in the crematory industry in San Fransisco. We jump right in and follow the new hire as she’s shaving an elderly dead man for the funeral preparation. Like Doughty, we too are brand new to this world and like her getting a hands on initiation into it. […]

A Delightful Book About Death

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

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Best for: Anyone – from 10 to 100 – who has questions about death. In a nutshell: Mortician and author Caitlin Doughty answers some of the most interesting and pressing questions from tiny humans. Worth quoting: “Sometimes death can be violent, sudden, and unbearably sad. But it’s also reality, and reality doesn’t change just because you don’t like it.” “Technically, per the laws of the state of California, I am not allowed to slip [your dead hamster] Hammibal into your pocket, even if he’s just […]



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