Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

Title: Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
Author: Mary Roach
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

ISBN-10: 9780393329124
ISBN-13: 978-0393329124

After reading my first book by Mary Roach: Stiff, I was expecting a lot from this book.  Being the skeptic that I am, I had heard about this book through a couple different skeptical blogs and podcasts.  After hearing various reviews, I was anxious to dive into it.

In some ways the book followed the format of Stiff.  In this book Mary Roach relays various different encounters throughout the book in which she looks for evidence into life after death.  She delves into reincarnation, hauntings, mediums, ghost hunters, and near death experiences, along with a few other diversions.  Each encounter she writes about would delve into the subject's back story providing an interesting portait of the people she is writing about.

I have to say however, that I found Stiff much more interesting than Spook.  I think it might be due to the fact that I didn't really learn very much from Spook, whereas I learned a great deal from Stiff.  Don't get me wrong, I liked the book, and find Mary Roach to be a wonderfully talented and amusing author.  I just didn't gain a whole lot from this particular book.  If I had to give it a rating between one to five (and that is what I have to do on this blog), I'd give it a 3 out of 5.  As Kristie likes to say about many movies she watches: It was entertaining but forgettable.