Reading And Walking: Becoming

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Mini Reviews: Nonfiction November

I read some awesome books during Nonfiction November, and I fell very behind on writing book reviews, so I thought I’d do some one-paragraph-style reviews. I’m not going to include summaries of the books because that would make this post colossal. Click the titles to see them on Goodreads.

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Mini Reviews: I Know What You Read Last Summer

Last summer was intense for me. I had so much stuff going on that I pretty much gave up on blogging. I didn’t give up on reading, though! I actually read some awesome stuff. Instead of ignoring all the books I finished in summer 2019, I thought I’d do rapid-fire reviews. I’m not going to include summaries of the books because that would make this post colossal, so click the titles to open Goodreads.

Mini Reviews: A Pearl In The Storm || A Walk In The Woods

Mini Reviews: Salvation On Sand Mountain || The Road To Jonestown

Mini Reviews: Get Well Soon || Opening Skinner’s Box

Mini Reviews: The Blood Of Emmett Till || Negotiating With The Dead

Mini Reviews: Ghostland || Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil

Mini Reviews: Cannibalism || Grunt

Mini Reviews: Very Good Lives || The Ghost Map

Mini Reviews: Saint Death || The Long Shadow Of Small Ghosts

These books seem like the fiction and nonfiction sides of the same story, so I thought I’d review them together.

Review: Still Points North: One Alaskan Childhood, One Grown-Up World, One Long Journey Home – Leigh Newman

Still Points North: One Alaskan Childhood, One Grown-Up World, One Long Journey Home – Leigh Newman

Growing up in the wilds of Alaska, seven-year-old Leigh Newman spent her time landing silver salmon, hiking glaciers, and flying in a single-prop plane. But her life split in two when her parents unexpectedly divorced, requiring her to spend summers on the tundra with her “Great Alaskan” father and the school year in Baltimore with her more urbane mother. 

Navigating the fraught terrain of her family’s unraveling, Newman did what any outdoorsman would do: She adapted. With her father she fished remote rivers, hunted caribou, and packed her own shotgun shells. With her mother she memorized the names of antique furniture, composed proper bread-and-butter notes, and studied Latin poetry at a private girl’s school. Charting her way through these two very different worlds, Newman learned to never get attached to people or places, and to leave others before they left her. As an adult, she explored the most distant reaches of the globe as a travel writer, yet had difficulty navigating the far more foreign landscape of love and marriage.

Review: Memoirs are so hard to review! What am I even supposed to say? “Yes, author, your life is sufficiently entertaining. I approve.” Well, I approve of this memoir. It is sufficiently entertaining.

Leigh Newman spends her early childhood in Alaska with her “Great Alaskan Father.” He flies his own plane, hunts, fishes, and lives off the land. Leigh’s mother isn’t as enthusiastic about all the nature stuff. When Leigh is seven, her parents divorce, and she moves to a wealthy part of Baltimore with her mother. She suddenly finds herself in a world of private schools, petty girl cliques, and museum trips. When she grows up, Leigh becomes a travel writer and travels all over the world, but she never feels at home anywhere. This memoir explores how the places we live shape who we become. What happens if you don’t feel like you belong anywhere?

“If you can't be yourself with yourself, how can you be you with other people?” – Still Points North

Unlike a lot of other memoir authors, Leigh Newman can definitely write. The book is full of keen observations and vivid descriptions. The author helps the reader see Alaska and Baltimore and how difficult it is to transition between the two. There are some heartbreaking scenes in this book. It all feels very honest.

I think anybody who has kids and is going through a divorce needs to read this memoir. It shows the importance of communicating with your kids and letting them know why their lives are changing. You can’t just dump them into a new world and expect everything to work out fine. It won’t work out fine.

I was surprised at the humor and liveliness of the writing style. Divorce is a depressing subject, but the book isn’t depressing. Some parts of it remind me of Jenny Lawson’s memoirs (but with less over-the-top ridiculousness). So, if you like Jenny Lawson’s books, you’ll probably like this one. The ending is hopeful. Leigh learns that parents are human. They make mistakes. Just because a parent screws up doesn’t mean they don’t love you. Overall, this is an uplifting book.

“Pain only seems scary while you're waiting for it to happen. After it does, it's just hurt and recovery.” – Still Points North

I have the same problem with this memoir that I have with a lot of others. I don’t see the author/narrator the same way she sees herself. A lot of this book reads like a list of “all the ways my parents’ divorce ruined my life.” But, from my perspective, the author’s life wasn’t ruined. It seems like her parents were pretty wealthy, even though her mother worked all the time. Leigh (mostly) went to great schools. She moved to New York, became a travel writer, got to see the world. She had a family of her own. This life doesn’t seem too messed up to me. Actually, it sounds like an amazing life. I’d like to see the world.

Despite my complaint, I really like this book. I read most of it in one night. The author’s voice pulled me in and made me want to keep reading.

TL;DR: Engaging memoir about divorce and belonging. I recommend it.

Review: The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through The Madness Industry – Jon Ronson

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through The Madness Industry – Jon Ronson

When Jon Ronson is drawn into an elaborate hoax played on some of the world's top scientists, his investigation leads him, unexpectedly, to psychopaths. He meets an influential psychologist who is convinced that many important business leaders and politicians are in fact high-flying, high-functioning psychopaths, and teaches Ronson how to spot them. Armed with these new abilities, Ronson meets a patient inside an asylum for the criminally insane who insists that he's sane, a mere run-of-the-mill troubled youth, not a psychopath—a claim that might be only manipulation, and a sign of his psychopathy. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud, and a legendary CEO who took joy in shutting down factories and firing people. He delves into the fascinating history of psychopathy diagnosis and treatments, from LSD-fueled days-long naked therapy sessions in prisons to attempts to understand serial killers.

Review: It starts with a hoax. Journalist Jon Ronson is drawn into a stranger-than-fiction puzzle that was created by a madman. This weird puzzle has disrupted the lives of several of the world’s top scientists, who were willingly—or unwillingly—drawn into solving it. As Ronson attempts to track down the puzzle’s creator, he starts to wonder about mental illness. Can one person’s mental illness destroy the world? This question leads him down a winding road to studying psychopaths.

“Suddenly, madness was everywhere, and I was determined to learn about the impact it had on the way society evolves. I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?” – The Psychopath Test

This book is Ronson’s strange and fast-paced journey through the madness industry. He learns how psychopaths are diagnosed, and then he sets out to find some. He meets Scientologists who insist that mental illness doesn’t exist, a man who (supposedly) faked being a psychopath, a mass murderer, a 7/7 conspiracy theorist, and a CEO who enjoys destroying his employees’ lives. Along the way, he explores the various methods that psychologist have used to treat psychopaths, and uncovers the not-so-scientific history of diagnosing mental problems.

Earlier this year, I read Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and loved it. I didn’t like this book quite as much as that one, but this one is still really good. It’s definitely not dry nonfiction because the author is kind of hilarious. He has a self-deprecating sense of humor that I appreciate. I laughed when he got a copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and promptly diagnosed himself with a bunch of disorders. Then he freaked out a little. Honestly, I probably would have done the same thing if I had access to that book. That’s why I have to stay far away from WebMD.

“I closed the manual. ‘I wonder if I’ve got any of the 374 mental disorders,’ I thought. I opened the manual again. And I instantly diagnosed myself with twelve different ones.” – The Psychopath Test

This book covers a lot of ground. It jumps around from subject to subject. That jumpiness makes it fast-paced and intensely readable, but I wish it had gone more in-depth on some subjects. I especially wanted to know more about psychopaths in the political and business worlds. I guess that’s why the bibliography exists. I can track down some of the books that the author read for research.

This is an entertaining introduction to the subject of psychopaths. I really liked both of the Jon Ronson books I’ve read so far. They’re clever and focus on subjects that interest me. I’ll happily read more of his work.

“Oh, you know what bloggers are like, they write and write and write. I don't know why, because they're not being paid.” – The Psychopath Test

Fun Facts About Psychopaths And The Madness Industry

1. In the 1850s, an American doctor identified a mental disorder that he called drapetomania. It only occurred in slaves. The only symptom was “the desire to run away from slavery.”

2. The author interviewed a reality show casting director who only puts mentally ill people on her shows. Mentally unstable people provide the drama that reality show producers want.

“Practically every prime-time program is populated by people who are just the right sort of mad, and I now knew what the formula was. The right sort of mad are people who are a bit madder than we fear we're becoming, and in a recognizable way. We might be anxious but we aren't as anxious as they are. We might be paranoid but we aren't as paranoid as they are. We are entertained by them, and comforted that we're not as mad as they are.” – The Psychopath Test

3. A doctor tried to cure psychopaths by locking them in a room together and giving them LSD. It didn’t end well.

4. Psychopaths are extremely rare, but they seem to be drawn to politics and business. There are a disproportionate number of psychopaths working in those fields.

“I wondered if sometimes the difference between a psychopath in Broadmoor and a psychopath on Wall Street was the luck of being born into a stable, rich family.” – The Psychopath Test

TL;DR: Are you curious about psychopaths? Read this book.

Review: The Stranger In The Woods: The Extraordinary Story Of The Last True Hermit – Michael Finkel

The Stranger In The Woods: The Extraordinary Story Of The Last True Hermit – Michael Finkel

In 1986, a shy and intelligent twenty-year-old named Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the forest. He would not have a conversation with another human being until nearly three decades later, when he was arrested for stealing food. Living in a tent even through brutal winters, he had survived by his wits and courage, developing ingenious ways to store edibles and water, and to avoid freezing to death. He broke into nearby cottages for food, clothing, reading material, and other provisions, taking only what he needed but terrifying a community never able to solve the mysterious burglaries. Based on extensive interviews with Knight himself, this is a vividly detailed account of his secluded life—why did he leave? What did he learn? As well as the challenges he has faced since returning to the world. It is a gripping story of survival that asks fundamental questions about solitude, community, and what makes a good life, and a deeply moving portrait of a man who was determined to live his own way, and succeeded.

Review: For most of my life, people have called me a hermit, so I decided to read a book about real hermits. I’m way less social than the average person, but compared to Chris Knight, I’m nothing. That dude has some epic hermit skills.

When he was twenty years old, Chris Knight hiked into the Maine woods without telling anyone where he was going. He didn’t even tell his family. Twenty-seven years later, he was arrested after a game warden caught him stealing food from a summer camp. Chris Knight had spent twenty-seven years alone in the woods. In all those years, he’d only spoken out loud once, and he rarely saw other humans. He spent most of his time observing nature and reading stolen books. This book blends Chris’s story with facts about hermits throughout history.

For the most part, I adored The Stranger in the Woods. It spoke to my hermit soul. I could relate to Chris’s struggle to fit in with society and his desire to get away from it. The interviews with Chris are really funny. I love his bluntness. I appreciate that the author didn’t present Chris as a hero. He’s a thief, and he deserves to be punished for burglarizing cabins.

My favorite part of the book is the information about historical hermits. Who knew that antisocial loners were so interesting? The book also explores the psychological reasons why people become hermits. I’m really glad that the author included the “A Note on the Reporting” section because now I want to read all the books about hermits. There’s a huge list of them in that section.

“He left because the world is not made to accommodate people like him.” – The Stranger in the Woods

My only issue with The Stranger in the Woods is that it feels exploitative. The experts quoted in the book believe that Chris Knight may have autism or a mental illness. He definitely doesn’t enjoy interacting with people. He kept telling the author to go away because he didn’t want to be interviewed. The author kept coming back and asking questions. I didn’t like that. Maybe I’m being oversensitive, but I worried that the author’s presence made Chris feel pressured into talking. It didn’t feel right to me.

Still, this is one of the most relatable books I’ve read this year. If you’re a hermit, you should pick yourself up a copy. 

My own hermit camp. I lived with my dog in that camper for several weeks in 2011. We had no running water, electricity, Internet, or cell phone service.

Fun Facts About Hermits

1. Hermits usually become hermits for one of three reasons: to protest society, to practice their religion, or to focus on science or art.

“I think that most of us feel like something is missing from our lives. And I wondered then if Knight's journey was to seek it. But life isn't about searching endlessly to find what's missing. It's about learning to live with the missing parts.” – The Stranger in the Woods

2. During the Middle Ages, hermits called “anchorites” spent their whole lives in dark cells attached to the outer walls of churches. People came to the anchorites for wisdom.

3. In eighteenth-century England, it was fashionable for upper-class families to have an eccentric hermit living on their estate. Families put ads for “ornamental hermits” in the newspaper. The hermit’s job was to be weird and entertaining.

4. Silence is good for humans. It lowers stress levels and improves brain function. Long-term isolation is bad for humans. It causes mental illnesses. How much socialization people desire depends on the levels of chemicals in their brains. Some people need a lot of socialization, and others barely need any.

“One's desire to be alone, biologists have found, is partially genetic and to some degree measurable. If you have low levels of the pituitary peptide oxytocin—sometimes called the master chemical of sociability—and high quantities of the hormone vasopressin, which may suppress your need for affection, you tend to require fewer interpersonal relationships.” – The Stranger in the Woods

5. Most people would rather get a mild electric shock than spend 15 minutes alone in silence. (What is wrong with you, people?)

“Modern life seems set up so that we can avoid loneliness at all costs, but maybe it’s worthwhile to face it occasionally. The further we push aloneness away, the less are we able to cope with it, and the more terrifying it gets.” – The Stranger in the Woods

Review: Touching The Void: The Harrowing First-Person Account Of One Man’s Miraculous Survival – Joe Simpson

Touching The Void: The Harrowing First-Person Account Of One Man’s Miraculous Survival – Joe Simpson

Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had just reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when disaster struck. Simpson plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge, breaking his leg. In the hours that followed, darkness fell and a blizzard raged as Yates tried to lower his friend to safety. Finally, Yates was forced to cut the rope, moments before he would have been pulled to his own death. 

The next three days were an impossibly grueling ordeal for both men. Yates, certain that Simpson was dead, returned to basecamp consumed with grief and guilt over abandoning him. Miraculously, Simpson had survived the fall but, crippled, starving, and severely frostbitten, was trapped in a deep crevasse. Summoning vast reserves of physical and spiritual strength, Simpson hopped, hobbled, and crawled over the cliffs and canyons of the Andes, reaching the base hours before Yates had planned to break camp.

Review: “Miraculous survival” is right. Damn, dude. There’s no way I could have done what Joe Simpson did. I would’ve curled up in the snow and died.

This book has fewer than 200 pages, but it’s a powerful story about the will to survive. The author, Joe Simpson, is a mountain climber. In 1986, he was climbing a mountain in the Andes when everything went wrong. First, he fell off a cliff and broke his leg. Then it started snowing. Then it got dark. Joe’s climbing partner, Simon, attempted to lower him down the mountain using ropes, but that just got both climbers into deadly trouble. To save his own life, Simon was forced to cut the rope and let Joe fall into a deep crevasse. Simon thought Joe was dead. He wasn’t. Joe spent the next three days crawling back to basecamp. Alone.

Joe’s journey down the mountain is fascinating, but he’s not a great writer. I had a hard time getting into the story. The beginning of the book reads like a bad how-to manual for mountain climbing. There’s not much introspection or explanation of why the author is climbing this random mountain in Peru. The first half of the book is basically, “We did this, then this, then this.” Since I don’t know about mountain climbing, I had a hard time picturing what was happening. The diagrams and glossary weren’t adequate for me. I’m clueless and need lots of explanation.

This is going to sound awful, but the book gets a lot better once Joe starts dying. The pacing slows down, and the story becomes more relatable. It’s no longer about getting to the top of a mountain. It’s about how a person finds the strength inside himself to do something that seems impossible. The writing is melodramatic at times, but the plot is harrowing. I had no idea how Joe was going to survive. Life kept getting worse for him, and he kept coming up with new ways to deal with it.     

It was easy for me to root for both Simon and Joe. This experience was painful for them. Joe spent three days dragging his broken leg through the mountains. Simon had to make the decision to cut the rope and let Joe fall. Then he had to spend three days believing he’d killed his friend. I felt bad for both of them. Simon was so close to rescuing Joe when everything went wrong.

“He was still grinning, and his confidence was infectious. Who said one man can't rescue another, I thought. We had changed from climbing to rescue, and the partnership had worked just as effectively. We hadn't dwelt on the accident. There had been an element of uncertainty at first, but as soon as we had started to act positively everything had come together.” – Touching the Void

If you’re a writing snob (like me), then you might struggle with this book a bit. The writing isn’t the best. I was able to overlook the writing because the story is so compelling. If you love real-life survival books, then this is a must-read.

Review: The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy The Shocking Inside Story – Ann Rule

The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy The Shocking Inside Story – Ann Rule

Ann Rule was a writer working on the biggest story of her life, tracking down a brutal mass-murderer. Little did she know that Ted Bundy, her close friend, was the savage slayer she was hunting.

Review: Books don’t usually make me anxious, but this one sure did. There were a few chapters where I set the book down and listened to my heart pound. Ted Bundy was one sick weirdo. I feel very sorry for all the women who had the misfortune of meeting him.

In the 1970s, crime writer Ann Rule was contracted to write a book about the unknown serial killer who was stalking the western US. When Ann wasn’t writing, she volunteered to answer phone calls for a suicide hotline. At her volunteer job, she met Ted Bundy, a college student who was studying psychology. They became friends. Several years into their friendship, Ann learned that Ted was the serial killer that she was writing about. The Stranger Beside Me is a chunky book (500+ pages) that covers everything from Ted Bundy’s birth to his execution.

I have no problem reading horror fiction, and I’m fascinated by serial killers, but real-life murderers majorly creep me out. Especially murderers like Ted Bundy. I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that a dude would bludgeon women to death and then have sex with their corpses. How do people even get that messed up? Ann Rule attempts to answer that question in this book, but it’s still hard for me to understand. It’s just . . . yucky.

“And, like all the others, I have been manipulated to suit Ted’s needs. I don’t feel particularly embarrassed or resentful about that. I was one of many, all of us intelligent, compassionate people who had no real comprehension of what possessed him, what drove him obsessively.” – The Stranger Beside Me

Ted Bundy is a thought-provoking (and nerve-wracking) subject for a book, but I struggled to get through Ann Rule’s writing. Mostly because she needs an editor (or several). There are lots of typos and clunky sentences. The book also has huge pacing issues. The story often gets bogged down in pointless details. I don’t need to know the names and job titles of every person in a courtroom. Just tell me what they’re saying and why I should care.

I also think the synopsis is misleading. Since the author was friends with Bundy, I expected the book to be more insightful. Instead, it mostly contains information that could be found in newspapers or by reading court transcripts. Most of the book is very surface-level.

This is probably going to sound bitchy, but I’m going to say it anyway. I think this book would have been phenomenal if it had been written by someone with better writing skills.

Not-So-Fun Facts About Ted Bundy

1. In the 1940s, it was scandalous for an unmarried woman to get pregnant. Ted was born in a home for unwed mothers. His mother left him there for several months while she decided if she wanted to keep him or put him up for adoption. She decided to keep him, but not tell him the truth about his birth. Ted lived his childhood believing that his grandparents were his parents.

2. Bundy spent years concocting a revenge scheme to get back at his ex-girlfriend. She broke up with him because he wasn’t the type of man she wanted to marry. He transformed himself into her “perfect” husband. They started dating again. She fell in love with him. He proposed. Then he broke up with her. He planned this all out for revenge.

3. Bundy escaped from jail twice. The first time, he got lost in the Colorado mountains. After days of wandering through the forest, he stumbled back into town and was arrested a few blocks from the jail.

4. Girls loved Bundy. He actually proposed to his girlfriend in a courtroom. When the proposal happened, he was on trial for murder, and she was on the witness stand. She said yes.

5. Ted had “groupies.” Hordes of girls wrote to him in prison and attended his trials. They claimed they were in love with him. I don’t understand any of this. He was convicted of murdering young women. Why would any woman love him? Why would they want to be one of his sex corpses? Weirdos.

“The most basic bit of advice given to women who have to walk alone at night is, ‘Look alert. Be aware of your surroundings and walk briskly. You will be safer if you know where you are going, and if anyone who observes you senses that.’ The stalking, predatory animal cuts the weakest from the pack, and then kills at his leisure.” – The Stranger Beside Me

Review: Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage – Alfred Lansing

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage – Alfred Lansing

The astonishing saga of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's survival for over a year on the ice-bound Antarctic seas, as Time magazine put it, "defined heroism." Alfred Lansing's scrupulously researched book has long been acknowledged as the definitive account of the Endurance's fateful trip. To write their authoritative story, Lansing consulted with ten of the surviving members and gained access to diaries and personal accounts by eight others. The resulting book has all the immediacy of a first-hand account.

Review: When I was a kid, I went through a multi-year phase where I was obsessed with all things polar. I think I was attracted to the idea that there are places on Earth where humans have never stepped. Picture books about explorers and cold-weather animals satisfied most of my polar curiosity, but if someone had read me a copy of Endurance, I would’ve loved them forever. This is a very “Me” book.

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, tells the story of Ernest Shackleton's attempt to cross the continent of Antarctica in the early 1900s. Reaching Antarctica was so perilous that he didn’t even make it to the land. His ship was crushed by sea ice. Shackleton and his 27-man crew spent the next 17 months in the ocean, working their way across floating ice chunks in search of help.

“In that instant they felt an overwhelming sense of pride and accomplishment. Though they had failed dismally even to come close to the expedition's original objective, they knew now that somehow they had done much, much more than ever they set out to do.” - Endurance

This book was first published in 1959 and is a must-read for anyone interested in exploration. The author conducted extensive interviews with the surviving members of Shackleton's crew. He also had access to the journals kept by the crew. His research was thorough.

Even though I already knew the story of Shackleton's voyage, I couldn’t put this book down. I read most of it in one night because there’s so much tension. I wanted to know what happened next (even though I mostly already knew what happened next. Isn’t that weird?). The writing style is a bit dryer than I usually like. There are a few too many tedious details about boats and wind speeds, but that didn’t hurt my enjoyment of the book. I loved it.  

This story is a testament to human courage and human stupidity. Shackleton and his men were able to overcome every obstacle, but I can’t help thinking that the whole voyage was kinda really stupid. Shackleton wanted to be the first to cross Antarctica, but everything in Antarctica can kill you. You can starve, dehydrate, freeze, drown, get crushed by ice, get infections, slide off cliffs, fall into crevasses, get killed by the wildlife, go insane. Crossing Antarctica doesn’t seem worth it to me. I guess the world needs leaders like Shackleton, though. They manage to get stuff done when the odds are against them.     

“In all the world there is no desolation more complete than the polar night. It is a return to the Ice Age—no warmth, no life, no movement. Only those who have experienced it can fully appreciate what it means to be without the sun day after day and week after week. Few men unaccustomed to it can fight off its effects altogether, and it has driven some men mad.” - Endurance

Fun Facts About Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage

 1. The men on the voyage got along well and were rarely pessimistic about their situation. This is surprising because Shackleton was not a thorough interviewer. When he was interviewing potential candidates for the voyage, he spent less than five minutes talking to each person. He relied on instinct to pick his crew.

“No matter what the odds, a man does not pin his last hope for survival on something and then expect that it will fail.” - Endurance

2. There was a stowaway on the ship. The stowaway wasn’t discovered until the ship was too close to Antarctica to turn back. Shackleton was furious. He said that if the voyage went wrong and the crew had to resort to cannibalism, the stowaway would be eaten first.

3. To help them cross Antarctica, the crew brought 70 sled dogs. Seventy sled dogs require A LOT of food, and ships have a limited amount of space. The crew ended up tying the dog food (an entire whale carcass) high above the deck of the ship. The carcass rained blood down on the men and drove the dogs crazy. Dogs get excited when a delicious dead whale is floating above their heads.

4. The men kept themselves sane through the long Antarctic winter by hunting, racing the dogs, reading aloud, playing cards, singing, writing, telling stories, and putting on plays.

5. An all-meat diet is terrible for humans. Once the food the crew brought with them ran out, they survived on seal and penguin meat. The men were either constipated or had diarrhea all the time.

6. Eventually, the food situation got so desperate that the men ate the sled dogs. According to the men, dog meat tastes like veal.

Review: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons From The Crematory – Caitlin Doughty

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons From The Crematory – Caitlin Doughty

Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty—a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre—took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life’s work. Thrown into a profession of gallows humor and vivid characters (both living and very dead), Caitlin learned to navigate the secretive culture of those who care for the deceased.

Review: I’ve always been fascinated by corpses. I know that probably sounds awful, but I grew up on a steady diet of ghost stories and Stephen King novels. If a story didn’t have any corpses in it, I was very disappointed.

When I read the synopsis of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, I knew that I needed this book. I’ve read a lot about bodies, but I don’t know much about the funeral industry.

The author graduated from college with a degree in medieval history, and the only job she could get with that was “beer wench” at a medieval-themed restaurant. She decides to work at a crematory instead. This book is a collection of darkly humorous anecdotes, observations, death-related history, and insider information about how the funeral industry operates.

You’d expect a book about death to be depressing, but this one isn’t. I actually laughed out loud a few times because the author has a wonderful sense of humor. Her coworkers are funny, too. I guess you need to laugh a lot if you’re going to burn bodies for a living. The humor starts right away. This book has one of the best opening lines ever:

“A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves.” – Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

The book isn’t all funny, though. Working with bodies and grieving families has an impact on the author’s mental health. I love that she’s honest about the difficult parts of her job. It would’ve been easy to make this book humorous and nothing else.

This memoir is more philosophical/psychological than I expected. The author spends a lot of pages talking about modern society’s relationship with death. This stuff is interesting, but not as interesting as the author’s personal anecdotes.

I read the majority of this book in one sitting. It’s an engaging, informative memoir. I recommend it to everybody because it encourages readers to think about topics that they’d often rather ignore.

Fun Facts About Corpses

1. In the past, death was everywhere. Most children died before reaching adulthood. Funerals were held in homes. Churches—which were surrounded by cemeteries—were community meeting places. Nowadays death is hidden. It’s mostly kept in hospitals and nursing homes. People can go their entire lives without seeing a dead body. The author argues that death would be less anxiety-provoking if we understood what happens during the dying process and afterward.

“The fear of death is why we build cathedrals, have children, declare war, and watch cat videos online at three a.m.” – Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

2. Fat corpses smell worse than thin corpses. Bacteria love to eat fat and multiply.

3. It requires a lot of effort to make a corpse look “natural.” Spiky bits of plastic are used to keep the eyes shut. Wires are shot into the jaw to keep the mouth closed. There are special kinds of makeup just for dead people. Plastic wrap is wound around the body so that the bloated limbs fit into clothes. None of this is very “natural.”

4. Corpses don’t make hospitals look good. You can’t just roll a corpse down the hallway at a hospital. That’s why hospital workers use fake gurneys to move dead people. To the casual observer, it looks like a regular empty gurney, but the corpse is hidden inside it.

“I had lived my entire life up until I began working at Westwind relatively corpse-free. Now I had access to scores of them—stacked in the crematory freezer. They forced me to face my own death and the deaths of those I loved. No matter how much technology may become our master, it takes only a human corpse to toss the anchor off that boat and pull us back down to the firm knowledge that we are glorified animals that eat and shit and are doomed to die. We are all just future corpses.” – Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

5. During the American Civil War, undertakers followed armies around. After a battle, they’d gut the corpses and stuff them with sawdust right on the battlefield. (As long as someone paid them to do it.)

6. The author isn’t a fan of embalming bodies. It’s a standard practice in the funeral industry, but it’s not always necessary. It’s just an extra cost for the dead person’s family. This is why you should make plans for your own corpse. Know what you want done with your body and how much everything should cost. Leave instructions for your family.

“Though you may have never attended a funeral, two of the world's humans die every second. Eight in the time it took you to read that sentence. Now we're at fourteen. If this is too abstract, consider this number: 2.5 million. The 2.5 million people who die in the United States every year.” – Smoke Gets in Your Eyes