a non-fiction book
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach.
This is how it begins:
The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken. I have never before had the occasion to make the comparison, for never before today have I seen a head in a roasting pan. But here are forty of them, one per pan, resting face-up on what looks to be a small pet-food bowl. The heads are for plastic surgeons, two per head, to practice on.... "Isolate the brow as a skin island." The [instructor] speaks slowly, in a flat tone. I'm sure the idea is to sound neither excited and delighted at the prospect of isolating skin islands, nor overly dismayed. The net effect is that he sounds chemically sedated, which seems to me like a good idea.
Doesn't that sound fascinating to you? The entire book is about how science uses cadavers in their studies. She is an amusing author, and the book is quite funny, in a "oh right, this is about dead people," kind of way.
She writes other books too. Spook, about the study of the afterlife, and Bonk, about the science and study of, well, bonking. I haven't finished either book. But I am interested in her newest one, Packing for Mars, about living in space.
I have also read a book called Never lick a dead man's hand. It's about a forensic anthropologist. With a title like that, don't you just have to find out why?
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