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Death can be a little scary

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It’s starting to be that season. Scary decorations have appeared all over town, children (and adults) are preparing their costumes, and ghost stories are being swapped, as we prepare to celebrate what is, in my opinion, one of the greatest holidays of the year. To help you get into the spirit of the Halloween season, I would like to suggest three books about death. Now, don’t stop reading. I know it sounds morbid, but death can actually be a fascinating and funny thing to read about, and when better to curl up with a few books about dead bodies than in October?

The three books I would like to suggest to you today are written by Caitlin Doughty. She is a New York Times best-selling author, blogger, YouTube personality, and happens to be a mortician who owns her own funeral home. She has written three fantastic books and all focus on death and dying from a unique perspective and described in a surprisingly humorous way.

Doughty’s first book is called “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory” (921 Doughty, C). It is part memoir, explaining how a young woman started working in the funeral industry, and part behind-the-scenes look at how the American funeral industry works. It is a genuinely funny book, and you’ll learn an incredible amount from it.

Doughty’s second book is “From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death” (363.75 Dou). In this book she recounts her travels all over the planet, during which she looked at how different cultures deal with death and care for their dead. Every page teaches you something new and fascinating about life and death around the world. For example, in Japan there are now high-tech cemetery buildings where family members can swipe a card to light up the specific compartment where the ashes of their loved one are contained, and in Indonesia, the bodies of the deceased are kept in their family’s house for many months after they pass away and treated as if they are a present member of the family. Fascinating customs like these and many others are described in this book in a way that is both detailed and reverent without being morbid. From Here to Eternity was a New York Times best seller and one of my favorite books; you won’t regret picking it up during this spooky season.

The most recent of Doughty’s books is “Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death” (306.9 Dou). After writing her first two books and producing death-related content on YouTube, she has become something of a celebrity and often gives talks about death. Over the years she has been asked many interesting questions by her audiences. Doughty claims that the best questions come from children who are “braver and often more perceptive than the adults” and not “shy about guts and gore.” So in this book she has collected and answered all the best questions children have asked her about death. So if you’ve ever wondered: What would happen to an astronaut body in space? What do dead bodies smell like? Can I be buried with my pet? Can I keep a family member’s skull after they die? Or other similar questions, this book is for you. Doughty answers the questions in a straight-forward, humorous way that makes it almost reminiscent of a children’s book, and it even includes illustrations which add to the childlike sense. In many ways this book could be a good read for a younger audience as it teaches a lot of science, explaining things like: how decomposition works, how animals became trapped in amber, and how different parts of the body work. However, just like the young audience who inspired the book, she is not “shy about guts and gore.” So it may be a book parents want to skim first before handing over to their child. This book has the potential to be an engrossing read for people of all ages who have ever had questions about death that they were too afraid to ask.

I hope as you prepare for this spooky holiday season, in addition to your usual scary stories about ghosts, zombies and skeletons, you will consider reading one of Doughty’s books which strive to make death a little less spooky.

 

Emma Lashley is a library assistant at the reference and local history department at the Crawfordsville
District Public Library.


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