false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166669250m/14990.jpg 14990 13 If author Mary Roach was a college professor, she'd have a zero drop-out rate. That's because when Roach tackles a subject--like the posthumous human body in her previous bestseller, <I>Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers</i>, or the soul in the winning <i>Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife</i>--she charges forth with such zeal, humor, and ingenuity that her students (er, readers) feel like they're witnessing the most interesting thing on Earth. Who the heck would skip that? As Roach informs us in her introduction, "This is a book for people who would like very much to believe in a soul and in an afterlife for it to hang around in, but who have trouble accepting these things on faith. It's a giggly, random, utterly earthbound assault on our most ponderous unanswered question." Talk about truth in advertising. With that, Roach grabs us by the wrist and hauls butt to India, England, and various points in between in search of human spiritual ephemera, consulting an earnest bunch of scientists, mystics, psychics, and kooks along the way. It's a heck of a journey and Roach, with one eyebrow mischievously cocked, is a fantastically entertaining tour guide, at once respectful and hilarious, dubious yet probing. And brother, does she bring the facts. Indeed, <I>Spook</i>'s myriad footnotes are nearly as riveting as the principal text. To wit: "In reality, an X-ray of the head could not show the brain, because the skull blocks the rays. What appeared to be an X-ray of the folds and convolutions of a human brain inside a skull--an image circulated widely in 1896--was in fact an X-ray of artfully arranged cat intestines." Or this: "Medical treatises were eminently more readable in Sanctorius's day. <i>Medicina statica</i> delved fearlessly into subjects of unprecedented medical eccentricity: 'Cucumbers, how prejudicial,' and the tantalizing 'Leaping, its consequences.' There's even a full-page, near-infomercial-quality plug for something called the Flesh-Brush." While rigid students of theology might take exception to Roach's conclusions (namely, we're just a bag of bones killing time before donning a soil blanket) it's hard to imagine anyone not enjoying this impressively researched and immensely readable book. And since, as Roach suggests, each of us has only one go-round, we might as well waste downtime with something thoroughly fun. <i>--Kim Hughes</i> 2398507 book 2005 Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife total:3185|5:412|4:1000|3:1210|2:488|1:75| 3185 10741 5290 662 3 10 false false Wed Mar 19 13:11:10 -0700 2008 Tue Mar 25 07:39:56 -0700 2008
Her discussion of the scientific inquiries into stories of reincarnated children provides an excellent example of the difficulties of trying to...more...]]> 2 5 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 09 15:36:42 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 10 10:04:59 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 5 false false Mon Jun 16 16:51:40 -0700 2008 Sun Jul 20 06:40:17 -0700 2008
But you can also sense the places where he...more...]]> 5 5 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 27 12:29:29 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 27 12:35:08 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 3 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Nov 21 21:07:45 -0800 2007 Wed Nov 21 21:09:45 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 2 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Jun 14 14:27:12 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 19 01:31:17 -0700 2007 Spook first because it's subject matter interested me and then I knew I had to buy it when I saw that the author was none other than Mary Roach who had written another interesting and intriguing book dealing with the physical body at death. Remembering how amusing and fascinating that r...more...]]> 3 2 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Jul 15 19:47:27 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 27 13:55:08 -0700 2007 Stiff, which I also enjoyed, but seems not as well-honed as her prior effort. She does a good job of keeping the tone light, but it can be too "jokey" to read for long stretches; nearly every paragraph ends with a rimshot, with many other punchlines...more...]]> 2 1 false false Sat Apr 11 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 10 07:08:30 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 13 07:18:47 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 1 false false Fri Jun 22 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun May 11 13:14:31 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 11 10:07:50 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 true false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Jun 14 10:16:41 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 19 10:37:11 -0700 2007 Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers) with unexpected grace and humor tackles another delicate topic: the afterlife. She analyzes a hodgepodge of different beliefs...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Wed Oct 10 17:19:29 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 10 17:57:29 -0700 2007 more...]]> 0 0 false false Wed May 13 14:45:05 -0700 2009 Wed May 13 14:45:05 -0700 2009 Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers. She's now followed that with Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. Fortunately, the latter is told with the same light touch and pl...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Jan 03 13:35:19 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 03 13:35:30 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 true false Sat Jul 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 25 22:03:07 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 25 22:11:32 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Jul 08 10:41:31 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 08 10:56:00 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Feb 10 11:46:04 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 13 08:39:41 -0800 2009 more...]]> 0 1 false false Thu Feb 05 09:37:04 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 05 09:37:04 -0800 2009 If you want firm answers about the particulars of the afterlife, you'd better wait until that coronary. Look no further if an entertaining survey of investigations into the afterlife will do. Roach, more concerned with people's bizarre behavior than the actual existence of an afterlife, writes with ...

more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Jun 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 17 20:36:59 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 21 21:14:07 -0700 2009 Spook must be the kind of book I like, because I keep picking up such books: Nonfiction yet character driven, fact-based yet narrative, informative and well researched yet breezy and clever. Much like Soul Made Flesh and Galileo's Daughter</>. In fact, this book even has a shout-out to...more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Jun 08 09:01:34 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 03 09:05:05 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 08 09:01:34 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Mar 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 26 13:39:45 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 01 04:44:06 -0700 2009 Stiff - The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, but I still loved it. Her writing is still funny and hard to put down (read this one in three days).

I guess what made this one not quite as great was that was that so much of it was devoted to quackery. The chapter on near death...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=14990