paigeawesome

I have to congratulate myself on picking an awesome Halloween book. ;D This fit that kind of creepy, gorey, weird theme perfectly.

Also I really enjoyed it.

It is a really good mix of engaging and informative. I learned a lot and laughed out loud along the way. I had wanted to read something nonfiction but was not ready for anything heavy-duty, saturated as I am this week with work, school, and other ~responsible~ things. This was perfect.

The chapter "Out of the Fire and Into the Compost Bin" made me think that I am, for better or for worse, really out of touch with mainstream American culture (but I guess I already knew that?), on account of how people in this country are totally fine with cremation, embalming, burial, and donating to medical science, but are all ~~ZOMG NOOOOOOOOOOO OMFG THAT'S DISRESPECTFUL LKSDDSKF about composting bodies. Seriously WTF people. (I guess this really irked me since I've wanted to be composted or something similar before I even knew it was an option--but it's not really an option in this country, so...ugh! Maybe by the time I die it will be.)

Overall I am pretty enthusiastic about this book. I am pretty squeamish about how the body works (sometimes heartbeats really make me anxious, thinking about breathing can trip me out in a bad way and when we were learning about how muscles work in biology I couldn't take notes because I had suddenly found it difficult to hold a pen), and there are some things in here that made me wince (like...where to hammer the nail when you are putting someone up on a cross comes to mind), but overall very little of my personal squeamishness was triggered. But I suppose your mileage may vary. Likewise, I did laugh a lot during this book but not ALL of Ms Roach's jokes were funny to me (what has she got against people named Elmer, jeez); so I suppose if you read the first chapter and you're annoyed by her brand of humor, you probably won't enjoy the rest of the book. To me she only missed the mark 1 out of 10 times or so, and sometimes she was so funny I was snickering to myself until Peter asked me what was so funny.