Stiff- Mary Roach

DO read this book, but DON'T read it before bed.

Or while you're eating.

Since I eliminated both of my favorite reading occasions almost immediately, it took me a long time to finish this book. But reading it was worth the dragged-out timeline, because the book is truly fascinating, focused, and surprisingly funny. I don't know whether Mary Roach won any awards for her writing in Stiff, and I am too lazy to find out, but she should have.

Consider the task she faced: to write about cadavers--remnants of our loved ones but no longer our loved ones, bodies which may have any number of mind-boggling adventures perpetrated upon them. (Not that--and this is key--not that they mind.) The book is informative (sometimes overly so), even-handed, thoughtful, and respectful. AND it's funny. It's laugh out loud funny. Let me tell you: you have not received those sidelong snortlaughing-while-reading-in-public looks until you are snorting in public while reading a book about cadavers.

How did Roach make her writing snortlaugh-funny, while writing about cadavers, without once availing herself of disrespectful cheap shots? I read closely to try and scry out her genius plan. According to my scrying, her genius plan was two-pronged. Prong One: wordplay. Any time a historical source or present-day researcher uses a slightly odd turn of phrase, that phrase is turning right around and cropping up again a few paragraphs further on, in a slightly surprising, playful or humorous way. Good stuff. (Consider the control she must have over language, to make these odd things stick out slightly and then to turn them gently on their ears. Hope she got an award for that, too.) Prong two? Her own quirky normalcy. She's talking about crazy ish sometimes, and she realizes how crazy it is. Sometimes it is a little repulsive. But she also finds it super-fascinating. The reader gets the impression that this lady would be excellent to talk to at a cocktail party...just as soon as you're through eating, that is.