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 […]

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

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty

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This was interesting, although I enjoyed her follow up (Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death) a bit more. In From Here to Eternity, Doughty travels to different areas of the United States and then the world to see how different cultures mourn their dead. There’s a wide variety of locales — a funeral pyre in Colorado, a sky burial in Nepal, a massive collection of urns in Japan. Throughout her travels, she discusses how very messed up the […]

“We can’t make death fun, but we can make learning about it fun. Death is science and history, art and literature. It bridges every culture and unites the whole of humanity.”

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

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I’ve read Caitlin Doughty’s previous books Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity and enjoyed them both immensely. I find Doughty’s manner of discussing death and dying and all that comes after reassuring, practical, and informative with just the right amount of humor and levity. When Ale brought to my attention that she had a new book out I knew I’d be reading it no matter what. When I put it on my to read list I had no idea what Will […]

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 […]

Let’s Talk About Death, Bay-Bee

From Here to Eternity - Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty

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Do you have a plan for what happens when you die? What do you want to happen to your mortal remains? My husband wants his ashes packed into a cannon and used to set off a controlled avalanche- preferably over a miniature village- so that he can “take something out with [him]” when he goes. I am not sold entirely on my end yet; I had an idea involving fireworks before I started reading this delightful book, but now the door has been opened to […]

Making all things Death interesting, with Pictures

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty

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So technically I started this book on New Year’s Eve day but I did not get it finished in time to be a final review of 2019, so here it is as my first review of 2020. Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? is very much as it has been advertised: an entertaining, yet informative discussion of various questions a mortician has been asked about death and dying. The one thing that I was not expecting and still kind of doubt is the claim that […]



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