I N C L U D E S A F F I L I A T E L I N K S
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Title: From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good DeathAuthor: Caitlin Doughty
Published: 2017
Language: English
Pages: 238
Rating: 5/5
Summary:
In this exploration of death and its rituals, mortician Caitlin Doughty travels around the world to see how different people and cultures care for their dead.
Review:
I thought this book was really interesting, easy to read and I feel like I learned a lot.
I've never really spent all that much time thinking about how we deal with our dead these days and that it could be so entirely different from place to place, but of course it's different in different cultures. I loved getting to know more about that and read about what helps people deal with their grief and how they feel the dead should be honoured.
The author makes a point of showing us that being around dead people and having a greater connection to them is very common in other parts of the world, like in Japan where relatives pluck bones from the ashes of their loved ones and put them in an urn. There are all these rituals being done that is so different from anything I've ever experienced and it really opened my eyes to how different approaches can work for people.
This book is also illustrated throughout and I loved having that in there; you get to see different places and rituals and even corpses, which the last one, you'd think be a little jarring but it actually isn't.
I really like how this book opened my eyes and how it made me think of death and grief and the ways we have to allow space for it in our lives. I also appreciate that there are some funny bits in here, as it gave room for some chuckles amid some of this heavier stuff. An excellent read and a great introduction to this topic.
You can read more about it on Goodreads
