Hey there! I have set myself a summer reading goal: I’m reading a book a week for 15 weeks. I started 5 weeks (and 6 books!) ago and will go through to the first week of September.

So the third book I read for this challenge was Stiff by Mary Roach. This book came in with a bunch of other books I had put on hold from the library, and I was really feeling the pressure to get them all read in time!

This book was at times gross, graphic, and hugely entertaining.

Because this book was about cadavers- how they decay, how they’re disposed of, the various ways they can be useful to scientific and medical advancements.

So it feels kind of wrong to say that this book was hilarious- it had me actually chuckling to myself on the bus! Because the way Mary Roach wrote this was as a layperson, exploring the various professions involved with bodies, and sharing with us her own feelings (and moments of queasiness) as they happen.

One of my favorite moments included her trip to a forensic anthropology lab where corpses are left out in various states of decay for educational purposes. Another was the interesting callbacks to how bodies were treated historically- our modern ways of dealing with death look pretty odd, even in comparison to the sometimes unscrupulous industries of the past!

Anyway, I think I’ll try and read more of Roach’s books, I loved her writing style, and have high hopes for her book “gulp”, about the digestive system.

Happy reading!