Mary Roach's STIFF: THE CURIOUS LIVES OF HUMAN CADAVERS

Ever since I learned it could potentially be a thing, to turn a human corpse into pencils, I've been absolutely certain that this is what I want done with my remains.

After reading Mary Roach's remarkable Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, though, I'm having second thoughts. Because, awesome as being turned into pencils might be, there are way more awesome things that might be done with this meat carcass of mine when I'm done with it. Things that might benefit all of humanity, rather than a few dozen of my friends who still write their grocery lists on paper.

Yeah, yeah, it might just be that all I'm good for is providing a head on which plastic surgeons can practice doing nose jobs and face lifts, but I might also do service as a human crash test dummy, making the next generation of cars even safer than the last. Or I might teach the next generation of crime scene investigators something new about how bodies decompose in soda ash or sand. Or I might see service as an awesomely gruesome movie prop in some fashion or other!

Oh, the possibilities!

Such are the thoughts a book like this inevitably inspires, even if it's not really good.

But it is, in fact, really good. Mary Roach ( I find myself wondering if that's her maiden name or if she had to hunt down a guy named Roach and marry him in order to have the best name EVER for a journalist who investigates things no one else has the stomach to) has a lively, somewhat gruesome curiosity, a courage abd honey badger-saque lack of concern about how she might be perceived for indulging it, and a knack for framing the results of all of this as satisfying and entertaining narratives. In other words, she is fun. 

I bet she's a blast at cocktail parties. 

What an enjoyable read!