LOVED this book and want it in my permanent collection, but we somehow ended up with two copies. So this one's available for trade or RABCK!

Sending to Prachi in Inda. Enjoy!

And it's here! Thanks for the trade, ekgv414!

I went through the first few pages of this book and it doesn't seem to be much my type. Thought ecuas might enjoy it though, as he likes reading about dark, macabre things. Enjoy!

Back with me...will go to a new home soon.

Sending off to linguistkris for the wishlist tag game. Enjoy!

THANK YOU, Prachi! I've been wanting to read this for ages, ever since I caught an interview with Mary Roach some years ago and she struck me as inquisitive, funny and smart.
I wonder what it felt like modelling for the cover photo... it's not something I think I'd enjoy doing. *shudder*

Also, thank you for the amazing RABCK/HGG parcel this arrived in. All these pretty things! I feel like it's Christmas already. :)

Reserved as a wishlist tag for mathgirl40.

My conceptions about this book were quite wrong! I imagined kind of a body-farm scenario that would explain what happens after death naturally (i.e., mainly decomposition), but instead, there are more "uses" for a corpse than I ever imagined!

I really quite enjoyed this book, and thanks to Roach's fun and very personal style of writing, I hardly ever felt grossed out at all. While that obviously is a good thing, I also felt slightly annoyed by it, though: I read this in very close proximity to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, another book that deals with what may become of us after our deaths and the ethics of (medical) research, and in comparison with Henrietta, Stiff just pales. The similarities between both books are obvious, and even though Stiff was certainly both entertaining and educational, it just never emotionally touched or satisfied me as Henrietta did.
It may be bad luck I read both so quickly after one another, and I'm sure my rating for Stiff would have been a little higher if I hadn't, but there you go.

Thanks for sending this book, linguistkris! I really enjoyed Packing for Mars and have been looking forward to reading more of Mary Roach's work.

Roach's book about cadavers is bizarre, unusual, fascinating, and funny but it also tries to be respectful and sensitive about the topic of death. The section on head transplants is certainly weirder than most science-fiction stories I've read. The book made me consider a number of issues, like what I'd like to see done with my own body after my death, that I normally try to avoid thinking about. This was a fast read but it was packed with interesting information.

I brought this to a meetup with the Toronto BookCrossers, where I had a lovely time!