If you're at all interested in what happens to your body after you die - this is the book for you. Fascinating reading. When you're done, go sign a donor card!!

A fellow Book Crosser from New York contacted me about sending the book to her. I shipped it out (via media mail) today and she should be receiving it sometime next week.

I received this book in the mail today. This book sounded like an intriguing prospect from the very first description. The cover, with two big human feet just leaping out at the reader, is particularly eye-catching.

As I'm finishing "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold, I think this might be a great followup. Thanks, cjhoko, for sending it on to me.

Having finished this book, I have to say that the author has done herself proud. Not prurient (necessarily) but bound by an endless curiosity, Ms. Roach delves deeply into her subject, leaving no (grave)stone unturned. From seeing maggots burrowing beneath human flesh to watching dead cows being burnt, Mary Roach explores all the ways that nature, society and humanity work with and on the dead.

The author is witty, probing and occasionally irreverent as she searches out the mysterious, bizarre and smelly byways of death and how we deal with it.

After reading this book, I started giving serious consideration as to how I wish my body to be treated after I die. Cremation is less expensive than burial but it costs a lot for the state to keep crematoriums running. So do I want to donate my body to science? My skeleton to a university? My brain to Harvard? Or should I get myself composted so I can nourish a shrub or patch of violets? The latter is appealing since they're my favorite flower. I need to think about this.

I met Ms. Roach yesterday at a book signing and the woman is as literate and compelling in person as she is in her book. Thanks again for sending it, cjkoho!