Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

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

17 reviews

sammantha's review

dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Grief, Suicide attempt, Terminal illness, War, Fatphobia, Car accident, Addiction, Animal death, Blood, Cancer, Cannibalism, Suicide, Child death, Colonisation, Drug use, Medical content, Animal cruelty, Death, Pregnancy, Mental illness, Self harm, and Suicidal thoughts

rtaire's review against another edition

emotional funny informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

I love memoirs, but I was pleasantly surprised by how the author interweaves the science, history, and culture of death with her personal experiences. Her writing resonates with my own anxieties about death and points me in a direction of what I might want, where to research, and potentially how to ask for it. Now I want a "good death" and hopefully will learn more in her next book (and/or her YouTube channel).

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Cannibalism, Animal death, Suicidal thoughts, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Murder, Car accident, Child death, and Death

Minor: Addiction and Drug use

stevie's review against another edition

dark informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Miscarriage, Medical trauma, Medical content, Grief, Fatphobia, Excrement, Drug use, Death, Chronic illness, Child death, and Cancer

elizlizabeth's review against another edition

informative lighthearted reflective medium-paced

5.0

I saw many of my concerns and thoughts about death reflected and answered in this book, and I was given lots more to ponder. Caitlin has a way of writing these things nonchalantly and straight to the facts, while mantaining an engaging and eerie, reflective vibe.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Cannibalism, Child death, Death, Fire/Fire injury, and Grief

Moderate: Suicide, Terminal illness, Abandonment, Addiction, Drug abuse, and Drug use

Minor: Vomit, Trafficking, Cancer, and Miscarriage

hmatt's review against another edition

informative lighthearted reflective medium-paced

3.5

I wanted a lot more out of this book than it provided. It was good, it did what it set out to do, but for a memoir I would have liked it to focus on a broader timeline in more detail. We get almost day-in-day-out accounts from the author's early years in the industry, but the timeline skips around and forward much more quickly after she returns to school. The narration assumes that we know the information to fill these gaps - it feels like it's assuming that the reader has kept up with the author's career progression as soon as she entered the public eye. Did I know who she is? Yes. But did I know the details of how she build her online presence and eventual business endeavours? No... and I still don't, because the book doesn't cover it.

I mostly appreciate when the author narrates their own non-fiction work, and that holds true here. I mostly appreciated it. But I felt as though some of the narration was stilted. The same inflections that work in the author's online videos don't always work in the context of narrating a book, and it's very clear at times which of these the author is more used to.

All that said - it was a solid read about a topic that I haven't seen a lot written on. It just lacked that extra "oomph".

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Car accident, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Dementia, Grief, Medical content, Suicidal thoughts, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Gore

Minor: Drug use

fionag's review against another edition

dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

Absolutely brilliant. I watch Caitlins videos and her voice comes through so well in this book. I loved watching her opinion on death and dying change throughout. The descriptions of other cultures’ rituals is unbelievably interesting, and the stories she recounts here are both beautiful and sad. Amazing n

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Child death, and Suicide

Moderate: Drug use and Mental illness

noshelf_control's review

dark funny informative fast-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Medical content, Body horror, and Blood

Moderate: Cancer, Death of parent, Dementia, Gore, Grief, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Terminal illness

Minor: Car accident, Drug use, and Alcoholism