<\/p>\n

I enjoyed Mary Roach’s first appearance here at the lair<\/a> so much that…rather than read the book of hers that I have owned for almost a decade and still<\/strong> have not read, I found the other book of hers that our local library had in stock and borrowed that instead! <\/p>\n

I probably should have gone with the book I already own. I suspect that it would have been more entertaining. That’s not to say that there is nothing enjoyable about Roach’s second book, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife.<\/a><\/em> There are several interesting, strange, funny, and disgusting portions of this book that amused (or traumatized) me greatly. Holistically, though, it’s quite an uneven read with a painfully slow start. I think it took me a full four chapters before I finally started enjoy the read. It’s also painfully obvious that Roach doesn’t really believe in any of the things about which she’s writing. <\/p>\n

I can’t completely fault her for this outlook. Tackling aspects of the afterlife when there’s not really anything that you can do to prove anything pertaining to the topic…it can be a hard pill to swallow, for sure. But that doesn’t mean that you have to be so…patronizing about it all. Her obvious “Scully” stance on this subject infiltrates every chapter. <\/p>\n

To be fair, I have somewhat set thoughts on the “afterlife,” but I’m still not 100-percent certain what I believe (which is why books like this appeal to me in theory). After reading this book, I’m quite certain I know how Roach feels about it all. However, that wasn’t my interest in this book and it wasn’t my hope when I decided to read it. I simply wanted to learn more about other cultures’ views as well as some of the experiments performed in the hopes of applying science to faith. I got that, but I definitely could have done without the accompanying patina of Roach’s incredulity concerning everything she discussed. <\/p>\n

Still, there are some interesting portions, as I mentioned. You simply have to suss out the interesting from the supercilious.<\/p>\n

Final Verdict:<\/strong> I do believe I shall pass on adding this book to my library. I also really do need to read Stiff<\/em> at some point in 2014…along with all the other books in my library that I’ve still not tackled. No, seriously. STOP LAUGHING. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I enjoyed Mary Roach’s first appearance here at the lair so much that…rather than read the book of hers that I have owned for almost a decade and still have not read, I found the other book of hers that our local library had in stock and borrowed that instead! I probably should have gone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[654],"tags":[44,792,930,932],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13413"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}