Fascinating, touching and surprisingly wholesome considering it's about dead bodiesMany people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.Mary Roach brings cadavers into a whole new, sometimes painfully bright, light. We follow her as she attends autopsies and medical discussions. We learn what happens to bodies as they decompose on the field, under the field and in so, so many places. The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. We get a bit of a history lesson with the sordid tales associated with body-snatching and the early medicine's need for atomically correct models. We even go so far back as ancient Egypt and their secret honey recipe (you will never look at honey in the same way) (trust me).This is one book you'd have to be dying to miss out on.Death. It doesn't have to be boring.

Laugh out loud funny is the way to go if you want to learn more than you realized might be worth knowing about dead bodies. It made me greatly disposed to finding out what else Roach has written, before I become a subject for studies like this one. And here are reviews of what we found:-----Grunt-----Gulp -----Packing for Mars-----Spook

Stiff is a book that really educated me, in terms of a topic that I was wholly unfamiliar with. Gone are the days when I thought that bodies were either donated to universities, cremated, or buried - there are SO MANY MORE OPTIONS.This book was both a fascinating and gruesome read. Although I wouldn't say I am the most squeamish of people, I did find myself screwing up my face in disgust at particular sections of this book (*cough*cannabalism*cough*). I wouldn't recommend it for people that are faint of heart, as this might be a bit of an ordeal to get through.I really enjoyed the mix of fact and humour as well as first-hand experience that Mary Roach included in this book. I did find myself grinning or chuckling inwardly at several moments throughout this book - the woman has a fascination with cadaver penises, for real!There was quite a lot of animal cruelty portrayed in this book, which did admittedly make me somewhat uncomfortable. However, I can understand why it was included, because this is a microhistory after all and must stay true to the facts put forward throughout the book. There were also some sections, such as the use of cadavers in ballistics practice, that didn't appeal to me as much and I did find myself zoning out a bit in those sections, but overall I found this a highly entertaining and informative read. This topic may possibly be only interesting for those who are ever so slightly morbid though.

Stiff, by Mary Roach, is a book about human cadavers and the curious situations they find themselves in. Well, they didn't find themselves in any situation. They are dead bodies. But Mary Roach found them and this book is the result.While reading this book I paused at halfway and actually asked myself if I wanted to bother finishing it. I have never found myself asking myself this before. I usually stick it out to the bloody, gruesome end. This book, however, just was not interesting. It was not the hilarious screamfest that I was promised on Amazon reviews. It did not take me into worlds that I had yet to explore. It was simply this: a disappointment.I had heard much about this book before I plucked it off the shelf at Barnes and Noble. It came highly recommended by MeFites and I had seen it referenced many different places around the internet. My first impression was that the author was a periodicals journalist trying to write a book. Each chapter is its own article, at least until she starts weakly trying to tie them together by adding things like, "But in the next chapter, we see how dead bodies really do push up daisies," at the end of chapters. Clearly an afterthought.Also, it may be due to the success of the book when it was initially published, but it just seems to me that almost every topic covered in the book has been recently covered on television or in magazines. Perhaps I read about these things in college. I certainly don't seek out interesting tidbits about cadavers, yet somehow, from somewhere, I was familiar with almost every chapter's subject. This book is not funny. I cannot imagine anyone laughing out loud to this book. It's not that I can't laugh at death or dead people or the situations, it's just that the author tries too hard. The humor is forced. It's not natural. It's like she spent hours trying to describe a lab tech in a funny way. It falls flat. Additionally, the author inserts herself into the action and records her own interviews, including awkward attempts at humor with very serious people. It just makes you cringe and you almost feel embarrassed for her.The end of the book couldn't have come fast enough. Toward the end, she morbidly tries to top each chapter with more disgusting details, more gross descriptions and more sick and twisted happenings. It begins to overpower the little bit of grace and dignity the book started out with. It's almost as if the publishers realized this, because odd, tiny rants about the dignity of deceased persons and the way people handle them are awkwardly inserted into the text. It gets repetitive.In the end, I just plain didn't enjoy this book. The author and her injected awkward humor and odd opinions annoyed me. The book seemed unpolished. Nothing seemed new and different about it. It was just a disappointment.

Loved this one! Mary Roach brings enjoyment to the macabre in this extremely educational book. Everything you wanted (and some things you didn't want to) know about the life of a cadaver. Packed with laugh-out-loud humour and interesting facts on every page, you'll be sad as it reaches the end. So check this book out and learn all about the exciting life your own body could have after death!