Those of you how know me know that I don’t often read non-fiction if I don’t have to for class. But I saw this book on a co-worker’s shelf and just had to take a look. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is a fun little book if you’re not squeamish. 
Roach’s book is all about what happens to our bodies after we die. And while she covers some of the biological processes, most of it is about what happens to bodies that are donated to research and medicine. There is a chapter on anatomy classes (with the compulsory mention of Burke and Hare), using bodies as crash test dummies, studying decomposition to help forensic scientists, organ harvesting, and so on.
Sounds like a rip, huh?
If Roach hadn’t written the book with such light, respectful but irreverant tone, this book would have been hard going. I’ve read a lot of mysteries, and am so stranger to descriptions of what bacteria and insects and time can do to a body, but one can really only take so much. But I feel that Roach has demystified at least some of the biological fact of death for me. I know that she’s written a book recently about what might happen to the soul after death, so I might have to check that out to see what might happen to the rest of a human being.
Though, if I read something like this again, I’ll try hard not to follow it up with something like The Zombie Survival Guide (my brief blog entry on this book).
