John's review

John's review

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
by Mary Roach

Nophoto-m-50x66 John's review
rating: 5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
recommended for: If you give a crap about the paranormal or the afterlife and aren't bitter about it

Mary Roach's book has two great strengths. The first is that she's damnably funny; she brings humor to any place of uncertainty and any place of anyone's absolute certainty. The second strength is that she's humble and friendly; her prose is downright gregarious, so that reading often comes off as chatting with a well-versed (but not know-it-all) friend. She is less interested with one person being right and more interested in finding every available source of information, which often means trascending two sides of an argument and finding bystanders. In her opening she casts doubt on both religion and science, doubting and chiding them paragraph-for-paragraph, setting us up for the spirited search of spirits she's about to embark on. Spook provides neither New Age pseudo-support for every little possibility of the supernatural, nor mean-spirited skepticism. The aforementioned two classes seem to dominate far too much of these subjects, making much of the discourse unbearable. If...more

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