Reviews tagging 'Addiction'

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

23 reviews

harrimyers's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

currently placed at 4.25 but definitely could move to 4.5. a very good, concise overview of both the american death industry, but also how the western world views death in general. the formatting was brilliant and this book has taught me so much about the death industry that i either hadn’t even stopped to consider or hadn’t known at all. it was a very interesting look at how the death industry in america has directly warped people’s views of death and their relationships with their own mortality. doughty’s personal experiences are fascinating, if slightly… concerning at times. her stories from the crematorium were the most engaging part of this book and how the author links these to her past childhood experiences with death and to philosophical and cultural views of death was highly impressive. at times, the tone felt a little too… casual? but i suppose that part of this comes down to doughty’s mission to demistify death and part because this book was made to be engaging to read. however, with this in mind, there was a few instances where this casual tone did do a disservice to her argument, especially in regards to the size of the corpses and her brief dip into her run of the bdsm scene in hawaii. overall, this book was definitely thought provoking and has definitely demistifyed a lot about death for me (coming from someone who often already considers death to be an important thing to be conscious about) as well as making me stop and think very carefully about what i want to happen to me

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Medical content, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide, Blood, Cancer, Terminal illness, Child death, and Dementia

Moderate: Alcoholism, Car accident, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Addiction, Panic attacks/disorders, Mental illness, Miscarriage, and Fatphobia

Minor: Cultural appropriation and Colonisation

alicroz34's review against another edition

dark funny informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

This book is full of really excellent, extremely dark information. It does, however, very much read like someone's first book. It hits its stride after the first quarter or so. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Child death, Grief, and Death

Moderate: Sexism, Injury/Injury detail, Excrement, Blood, Addiction, Miscarriage, Dementia, Cannibalism, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Racial slurs, Addiction, Sexism, Racism, and Misogyny

just_jeffrey0597's review against another edition

informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

Very informative and leads to a thought provoking experience about death and dying in American society 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cancer, Cannibalism, Death, Grief, Death of parent, Child death, Dementia, Addiction, Drug use, and Drug abuse

cadence99's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

2.5

What I liked:
•the discussion of death practices in various cultures 
•the authors personal musings on how best to manage the image and processing of death

What I didn’t like:
•chapters feel a bit disjointed in their themes
•the repeated use of race as a descriptor for ONLY non-white people when it is irrelevant to the narrative of the story being told
•pretty gross anti-fat comments, primarily in one particular section where she talks about her coworker declaring that despite the medical examiners determination to the contrary, the person MUST have died of a heart attack from being so fat and “This is why you can’t be fat!”- in addition to describing in great detail how fat bodies smell worse, but then dismissing the coworkers comments as “just fact” (even though he is literally ignoring fact by assuming the mans cause of death is not the one determined by the examiners professional assessment)
• in the same scene as above, repeatedly bringing up how her coworkers continually mistakenly say the person is Mexican, despite him being Salvadoran 
•irrelevant added story where a coworker says they should fire bomb the city of San Francisco because it is a “hell pit”

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Medical content, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Suicide attempt, Cancer, Car accident, Fatphobia, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Body horror, Cannibalism, Chronic illness, Fire/Fire injury, Gun violence, Infertility, Death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Ableism, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Suicide, Terminal illness, Abortion, Blood, Dementia, Racism, Addiction, and Child death

leweylibrary's review against another edition

dark emotional funny informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

I really, really want to give this 5 stars solely because of how much I enjoyed it and learned from it that I'm going to think about for a long time to come. But there were just a few parts that didn't age well and read as a bit offensive, so those sat funny with me.

Overall this book is a lot of morbid, informative fun! I feel like it's made me think about death and dying in an entirely different way--I already caught myself while watching the new Hunger Games prequel thinking about the dead bodies of the fallen tributes and how decomposed they must have been lol. It also connected some dots for me about past experiences concerning death. I had always thought I was uncomfortable with the first funeral I ever went to just because it was my first funeral, but I think I really was uncomfortable with the unnatural-ness of that funeral, how my great aunt didn't look like her anymore and she didn't look...dead enough to be dead.

I really want an updated version of this book--surely there are more "green" burial options now 10 years later? I also went ahead and put holds on all of the author's other books. Not only do I love the subject matter she focuses on, but I love her writing. She reminds me of Jenny Lawson with how deep and personal she can get but then also crack a weird, inappropriate joke in the next breath lol. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Suicidal thoughts, Medical content, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Body horror, Cannibalism, Death, Blood, Suicide attempt, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Mental illness and Dementia

Minor: Cancer, Addiction, Drug abuse, Terminal illness, Alcoholism, and Chronic illness

indieandajean's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

I'm a massive fan of Caitlin Doughty and the work she is doing through the Order of the Good Death to change the American perspective of death and mourning from our modern moment of hiding and sanitizing death towards a more traditional mourning ritual of home funerals and natural primarily non-embalmed means of body disposal. I'd read her other two books, but had yet to read this one because I was concerned that as her debut publication, it wouldn't contain her strong narrative voice and nonchalance about the details of death.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was untrue and that this book was not only extremely well written, but was the key to understanding why Caitlin's death fascination began and how she used her experiences to start the order. This book is a fantastic piece of memoir, and it is also a great place for the uninitiated to start when learning more about the good death and the ways in which we can begin to challenge the funeral industry as it exists today. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Child death, and Death of parent

Moderate: Medical trauma, Death of parent, Child death, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Alcohol, Addiction, Car accident, Terminal illness, Suicide attempt, Pregnancy, Murder, Mental illness, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Gore, Drug use, Drug abuse, Death, Chronic illness, and Cancer

Minor: Animal death

aquakirst's review against another edition

adventurous dark hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Medical content, Blood, Death, and Death of parent

Moderate: Medical trauma, Classism, Addiction, Gore, and Dementia

Minor: Excrement

spookily's review against another edition

dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness, Body horror, Death, Death of parent, Cannibalism, Blood, Child death, Gore, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Medical content, and Suicide

Moderate: Drug abuse, Miscarriage, Dementia, Drug use, Cancer, Classism, Violence, War, and Addiction

Minor: Sexism, Fatphobia, Pregnancy, Alcohol, Car accident, and Excrement

briar_nettleroot's review against another edition

funny informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Child death, Medical content, and Suicide

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Addiction, Drug abuse, Mental illness, Terminal illness, and Miscarriage

Minor: Panic attacks/disorders, Classism, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual harassment, Sexism, Grief, Car accident, and Racism

oliverreeds's review against another edition

dark funny slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Panic attacks/disorders, Dementia, Addiction, Cancer, Car accident, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, and Suicidal thoughts