"Stiff", by Mary Roach

Caveat #1: I like to share my opinions of the books I read, but this is not a proper book review. This is an improper book review. If you want something more studious...well, they have blogs for that.

Caveat #2: "Stiff" is a book infused with liberal splashes of black humor. I laughed; but not everyone does. If you';e not in the mood for macabre humor today, come back and read this tomorrow instead.

I wouldn't exactly say that I loved this book. That would be weird. But it was very interesting and fun to discuss. Mary Roach is a journalist and divided "Stiff" into chapters that stand alone as articles, really. And yes, the book really is about cadavers. People learn a lot from dead bodies.

Mary Roach is entertaining - downright funny at times. At one point she describes a journey to a small town in China to check the veracity of news story that a man who owns a crematorium there actually did cut the buttocks off cadavers so his brother (who owns the restaurant next door) could include them in his dumplings. Not true, she discovered after a lot of cultural and linguistic embarrassment; but I was most amused by her descriptions of the bad Chinese / English translations she encountered on the trip. It might just be an English as a Second Language teacher thing, so forgive me if you don't think it's funny; but when "We do chicken right!" translates to "Do me chicken!", I laugh my ass off.

This often leads to one of those humiliating moments when I say to my husband, "Honey! Listen! Listen! OMG, this is so funny! *Snort, snort* " He listens, bored, while I read the chicken thing aloud. I keep glancing up at him to see if he gets it. "Get it? 'Shampoo', but on the bottle it says, 'Sham Poo'! Huh? Oh, never mind. *Snort, snort*"

If you DO like bizarre translations, go to http://www.engrish.com/ and eat your heart out. But I digress.

Roach's style combines a sort of gee-whiz disingenuousness (she knows her curiosity is ghoulish, but she can't seem to keep herself from asking inappropriate questions) with solid facts and statistics. Some of the chapters cover such topics as:

1. What happens to cadavers in medical school anatomy labs;
2. How helpful cadavers have been in the studies of auto safety, ballistics, and police forensics;
3. Cannibalism;
4. How plane crash victims can reveal important information about the cause of the tragedy.

Some of these chapters were fascinating, some didn't grab me. For example, the chapter on ballistics testing bored me a little, so I skipped to the next chapter. As there is no story line, I felt no guilt.

I will say though, that, after the exhaustive research that went into this book, a better copy editor would have been appreciated. I'll bet Roach wasn't happy when she saw "Calvary" spelled "cavalry". That stuff leaps off the page at me, and I think, "Sloppy, sloppy. What is this, my blog?"

Everyone in my book club who read it enjoyed it except one person, who said she didn't like thinking about her eventual corpse-hood. This was one of the main issues raised by the book: What can you choose to have done with your body after death? Burial and cremation, of course. I know about donating oneself to science, because one of my friends has decided to do it. But I didn't know about a technique being tried in the Midwest, which dissolves bodies down to a pile of soft bones you can crumble in your fingers, and pH neutral, sterile water. In Sweden, you can be composted. Of course! Not at IKEA, though.

Unfortunately, reading the book has turned me off the idea of donating my body to science. I would love to be a cadaver in an anatomy / physiology lab; but when you donate your body to scientific study, you don't know where you're going to end up. What if my head were used for plastic surgery practice (the eye job I could never afford in life...); my leg went to an auto manufacturer for an impact study; and the rest of me went to a police lab in Tennessee so they could see if I rot more slowly in spandex tights? Lying out on the ground, headless, in spandex.... What would people think?

I have decided that cremation would be nicer, although did you know that cremains are sterile? They add no nutritive value to the soil. So, the idea of being composted appeals. I could be reduced to little pellets and put in a special, biodegradable box after which I'm planted under a lilac bush. Or maybe I would be more useful in the tomato patch. It has sentimental appeal, and adds whole new meaning to, "Bite me!"

Soooo...

Quality writing: 6 (Well, there was that whole "Calvary/cavalry" thing; and Roach would be the first to admit that she's no Steinbeck. It's not meant to be a literary experience.)

Interesting characters: 8. (Some of them are alive.)

Interesting plot structure: NA.

Addictiveness: Only 5. (For me, an addictive book needs an exciting plot with characters who are living, if fictional.)

Bonus points, though, for being thought-provoking and evocative.

Overall grade: 7

Ever thought about what you what should become of your body after you die?