Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

I first heard about Caitlin Doughty while listening to an interview with her on NPR years ago. I then found her website The Order of the Good Death and also saw a few of her YouTube videos which you can find under Ask a Mortician. I have had her book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory, on my To-Read list for years. I am fascinated by alternate burial practices and this book gives a lot of insight into both the traditional ways of laying a loved one (or yourself) to rest, as well as offering some information on other options. 

Here are just a few interesting things I learned from Ms. Doughty:

1. She leaves work each day at the crematory covered in a fine layer of human dust.

2. The funeral industry goes to extraordinary lengths to make a corpse look "natural". Doughty explains some of these processes in...detail.

3. The cremation process uses as much energy as a five-hundred-mile car trip for a single body.

Alternate options include having Dad's cremated ashes...sent into space, or tamped into bullets and shot out of a gun, or turned into a wearable diamond. One could also donate their remains to science, though what that actually means can vary significantly. Or one could be suited up in an "Infinity Burial Suit" which is embedded with mushroom spores that will remove toxins from the body and assist in its decomposition.

Author and environmentalist Edward Abbey said, "If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper tree or the wings of a vulture- that is immortality enough for me. And as much as anyone deserves." As a result, his friends stole his body from the morgue and buried him out in the desert exactly as he wanted.

This book was written in 2014, so it doesn't contain anything about my current favorite method of laying human remains to rest- natural organic reduction. Basically, it's composting for people, a process that has been in place for livestock for years. Each body is turned into one cubic yard of nutrient-rich soil that can then be used to enrich conservation land, forests, or gardens. You can read more about it here. It is a compelling option when you consider the environmental benefits and the natural returning to the earth.

This was a short book that certainly kept my attention. It may not be "cheery reading", but it was extremely interesting and thought-provoking. 

 

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

In Elizabeth Gilbert's City of Girls, the year is 1940 and we are introduced to Vivian Morris, a recent college reject with no plans for her life. In a moment of desperation, her parents send her to live with her theater-running aunt in New York City. There Vivian meets glamorous people and lives a glamorous life not at all matching what her prim and proper parents would want for her. She gets herself in trouble, she makes big mistakes, and the reader is along for the ride.

The story actually begins as a letter written in 2010 to a young woman named Angela that we don't know, but who has inquired how Vivian knew Angela's father. Presumably the whole story is about a mystery man and his possible relationship with our main character. Unfortunately, the wild and romantic bits of Vivian's tale all occur years before she meets this man, but we hear all the details anyway as if they are of the utmost importance and then this father is thrown in near the end with almost no significance at all. Honestly, I'm not sure why we needed to know about him at all except that it gave the old woman an opportunity to talk about her scandalous past.

This book is long (466 pages) and at times a little slow, but there was enough interesting that I kept reading. And yet, when I realized that the first two-thirds or more of the book had all been the shiny object meant to keep your attention, but without any real meaning at all? Well, SmartGirl, I was kind of irritated. Maybe you'll like it more than I did. There is plenty of description of WW2 era NYC and of theater life and night life. There are some great characters. Sadly, for me the story fell flat.

 

What I've Heard- This is How it Always Is

I waited to listen to This Is How it Always Is because I wanted to have some distance from the story and hopefully enjoy it anew. That strategy worked wonderfully well. I love this book so much and I was able to enjoy the sweet, funny moments as if I hadn't heard them before. The magic in the characters is so special. The mixture of fairy tale and truth is perfectly swirled together.

This was the best book I read in 2019 and I stand by that assessment. I will definitely listen to this one again. I hope you'll add it to your list.

 

Broken (in the best possible way) by Jenny Lawson

Okay, for reals, if you haven't read Jenny Lawson yet you need to do it NOW! Start with Let's Pretend This Never Happened and then read Furiously Happy. You'll be very glad that you did. Once you've finished those you'll be ready for Broken (in the best possible way). With her first book, Jenny mostly tells hilarious stories that very well may make you wet yourself. With her second book, she gets a little more frank about her mental illness, but in a way that still makes you laugh. 

With this most recent offering, Jenny, still funny, still mentally ill, pulls the curtain back even further. We witness her struggles with the health insurance companies that deny her the treatments that could make her life better or very possibly save it. It is heartbreaking, but Jenny makes it very clear that she has a much easier time of it than so many others. She has the ability to pay for the medications that her doctor says she needs and her insurance company says she doesn't. And really, who's to say which of those two entities really knows better. (It's the doctor. The doctor is the one who is better at deciding what she needs. That shouldn't even be a question, should it?)

She also gives a wonderful list of possible things that can help when one is in the grips of mental illness. It is a chapter entitled The Things We Do to Quiet the Monsters and it is wonderful. And I don't just say that because number nine on her list is Watch Doctor Who. I can't even remember how many times I've watched through that gift of a series, but it always makes me feel better. Life is stressful and Doctor Who makes it a little better. There are sad parts, but it is full of light and the darkness never wins, not in the end. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it, but I digress...

There are so many remarkable moments in this book, but the chapter called Awkwarding Brings Us Together was possibly my favorite. I laughed until literal tears were streaming down my face. It took me seven solid minutes to read one tiny paragraph to my husband because I could not get it out without cracking up. Jenny ends the chapter with this, which was just so accurate it was scary:

If you have managed to read these wonderful confessions without doing that thing where you're giggling so much people are staring and so you try to explain to them what's so funny but you're cry-laughing so hard that you can't get it out and they just stare at you like you're insane and that somehow makes it worse and so you laugh harder and then you get mad that they aren't appreciating how fantastically wonderful it all is, then we can't be friends, and honestly, I'm a little embarrassed for you.

Jenny Lawson is the most raw and real, honest and genuine writer I've ever read. There are others who try to imitate her special magic, but none come even close, though I am grateful for the way she has inspired others to share their truth. I love Jenny Lawson and I hope you do, too. If you haven't read her books yet, I really wish you would. And I also highly recommend her audiobooks. She reads them and her own voice makes the stories that much better. I can't wait to hear Broken. 

 

The Love Proof by Madeleine Henry

Can love transcend time? In Love Proof by Madeleine Henry, Sophie thinks so. A certified genius with a personalized education plan at Yale, Sophie is determined to make a breakthrough in the study of time. She meets Jake on her first day and they quickly become inseparable. Equally driven, he spends his four years of college in awe of her talent and intellect. Upon graduation, reality dawns and they are pulled apart. Or are they?

I really loved the first half of this book. I was fascinated by all the theory and scientific discussion. Unfortunately, it was ruined when one character makes a choice for the other for their own good. I hate it when characters, or people, do that. The result is one kind of success, but a great loss of another kind. I'm trying not to spoil the story for you in case you would like to read it yourself. The Goodreads rating is nearly four stars and the reviews are full of praise, but I was disappointed.

I loved how brilliant Sophie is. Smart women, especially geniuses on the verge of scientific discovery, really appeal to me. I have no problem with a character like that who is maybe a bit naïve with other more practical things in life, but this went too far. Sophie has no agency or strength of her own. It felt weak and that made me sad.

 

Gmorning, Gnight! by Lin-Manuel Miranda

I have loved Lin-Manuel Miranda for years and when I saw that he had a book published from his celebrated tweets, I was excited to read it. In Gmorning, Gnight! each left page has a Good Morning message. One of my favorites is this:

Gmorning from the younger version of you,

who couldn't wait to be you at this age right now.

The right page is then followed with the evening companion:

Gnight from the older version of you,

who remembers the very moment you are in right now

and is grinning from ear to ear, because

you have no idea about

the wonders ahead.

How lovely is that?! There are so many sweet little encouragements in this book that would be perfectly at home on your bathroom mirror or stuck to your morning coffee cup. 

In addition, this darling little book is illustrated by Jonny Sun whose doodles look a little like they belong in a Shel Silverstein book. This would make a wonderful gift for anyone you love or even like a little bit. 

I'll leave you with what I'm going to be putting on the inside of my medicine cabinet:

Gnight.

Tomorrow we try again.

Rest up.

 

When We Believed in Mermaids by Barbara O'Neal

In Barbara O'Neal's When We Believed in Mermaids, Kit and Josie are sisters two years apart. They grew up wild and untended on a beach in northern California. Their parents were passionate and inattentive. Now grown, Kit has made a good life for herself- she is a successful ER doctor and she surfs and takes care of her mother. They are both shaken when the see Josie's face on the news half a world away from where she died years before. Kit is now determined to find out if she's seeing ghosts or if, just maybe, her sister is still alive.

This book was a quick, entertaining read. It wasn't perfect and there were flaws, but I really liked it. I read this for book club and it supplied plenty of good discussion. I would recommend this for a vacation read- the beaches and traveling to a far off destination make it a great addition to your carry on.