I’m a big fan of reading non-fiction works; one of my favorite non-fiction writers is Mary Roach. She is one of the best authors around for taking a complicated or non-approachable subject and turning it into something that people can’t put down. Roach seems to delight in taking subjects that are particularly outlandish, weird and gross and turning them into writings that are incredibly engrossing.
Stiff: the Curious Life of Human Cadavers covers many of the ways that cadavers are used in scientific research. Cadavers have contributed so much to our current way of life and Roach gives them the recognition they deserve as they are used for medical practice, decomposition study and any number of other uses.
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal is Roach’s exploration of the path of our food from ingestion (and all that entails) to excretion and everything in between including the roles that smell and spit play in eating and digestion all the way to the dangers of toxic megacolon (a cool phrase but absolutely not something you want to happen to you).
