Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers

I must admit I first heard of this book while watching Six Feet Under. It was given to David on the show. Well, it is a very interesting book. It goes into all types of uses of human cadaver from medical research to canibalism. It has all kinds of interesting hisorical info. I was especially intrigued by the part about the Guillotined head that appeared to hear his name!!!! (how is that for a teaser?) It is very engaging and humorous while still being respectful to the subjects.

I must warn you...this book is not for the squemish...there are detailed descriptions of decaying human flesh and so on. But, I would highly reccomend this book if you are curious about what happens to the body after death. Check it out!

If Nobody Speaks of Incredible Things

Just call me the guy who buys books based solely on the length and cleverness of their titles. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor lays out the story of a single event on a street in England. This is the basic premise at least, and the impression that I got from the back of the book.

What you really get, however, is the story of one main character, supplemented with vignettes of her neighbors' lives. I was a bit confused for about the first 70 pages of this book. The author is a male, so I wrongly assumed that the main character was a male. Nothing really dissuaded me of this assumption for the first part of the book, so I was surprised when I finally realized that the main character was a girl. It is possible that i simply missed some important clue that the main character was a girl (i say girl as opposed to woman because she is at most a college student, and more of a girl than a woman), as i read this book mostly at airports and in-flight.

I was further confused because i had assumed from the back cover of the book that the events chronicled all took place over the course of one day. While this is true for the most part, the main character's story is not limited to a single day. Her story takes place over some period of time. The main character has her own chapters interspersed with chapters detailing the lives of the other residents of her street.

So it is fair to say that i was confused both by the sex of the main character, and the time frame within which events were occurring for the first quarter of the book. Because of this i had my doubts about whether i was going to enjoy the book. That said, the secondary characters (the people who live on the same street as the main character) all have interesting stories. The events of the day within which their stories are told ties them together with the story of the main character in one culminating final event with at least one unexpected twist.

There is a sort of macrocosm/microcosm style in sharing the story between the main character and the subcharacters that plays out in an interesting way. Once i figured out what was going on, i found If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things to be a really enjoyable read.

Shopgirl

For those of you who weren't aware, the movie Shopgirl is based upon the novella by the same name, written by Steve Martin. For such a short book I was surprised that it took me a while to get into the story, even though i already knew the basics of the plot.

The main character, Mirabelle, is a young, slightly damaged, sales girl working at the glove counter. She is a wallflower and an artist. From the instant she is introduced she is an underdog whom you want to root for. It is clear from the start that Mirabelle will be mistreated, and that things will probably end badly for her. Mirabelle hangs in there though, and in the end her story is one of personal growth.

What I enjoyed most about this book was the way it is written. The style is halfway between a normal narrative and a screenplay. It reads like a movie. If you have seen the film, you can easily imagine Steve Martin narrating the entire story. The language is pleasant and clever. Each scene is artfully laid out.

The book and the movie are very similar, but there are some differences and surprises that make it worth reading.