Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs

Who can possibly resist such a title? Certainly not me. I'd been meaning to read Caitlin Doughty for some time. I have her first book Smoke Gets in Your Eyes lurking in the TBR somewhere, but it was this one, her most recent title that really hooked me in.

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs is a collection of short essays, most a couple of pages, all answers to questions that Caitlin has been asked by children. Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs kicks off the collection, and the answer is not all that reassuring.

No, your cat won't eat your eyeballs. Not right away, at least. 

But the news is even worse for we dog owners.

Your dog will totally eat you. 

Hmmm, my dog doesn't like going hungry. It's true. She will eat me. 

Naturally, in a book like this there are many fascinating random factoids.

Cannibalism is not illegal.

Humans are red meat.

Blowflies can smell death from up to 10 miles away. (Small wonder they know when I've just opened the screen door- not that my kitchen smells like death, well I hope it doesn't, maybe it does to a fly?)

There are chapter exploring so many topics. What would happen if you die in space? Transporting bodies killed in war, both in the past and of course sadly the modern world still has a significant need for this. Entrepreneurial embalmers would follow battles around during the American Civil War, and used so much arsenic to preserve the bodies that arsenic can still be found flowing from certain Civil War cemeteries. 

As the book is written for children, it is entertaining, often funny, and the tone is generally kept light even when discussing these rather distressing subjects. I found myself actually laughing out loud at times, helped along by such phrases as a "freaky Violet Beauregard situation". Caitlin Doughty treads a fine path through some tricky topics.

Every chapter is intriguing in its own right. And often eye opening. I've worked in health care for 20 years and learnt a great many things from this book, and I've reconsidered my wishes regarding my own death. I'm not all that sure I want to be cremated any more. I've long assumed I would be, but had never thought about the process. Yes, I will be dead, but I'm not sure I want to put myself through it.

While cadaveric kidney transplants are common place and not at all disturbing, I was very disconcerted by the notion of a cadaveric blood transfusion! Not sure why, but I find it profoundly disturbing. 

We're very lucky to live in the modern era where while dying and death is still recognised as a process, it is easy enough to pronounce someone dead and  there are strict protocols for determining brain death. 

In Germany, in the late 1700s, there were physicians who believed that the only way to tell if someone was truly dead was to wait for the person to start rotting - bloating, smelling, the whole works. 

The whole concept of a Leichenhaus is extraordinary, and I'm so relieved that we no longer need these "waiting mortuaries".

I read Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? all the way back in Nonfiction November. As I was thinking recently about what book to take for the Secret Santa for my book group ladies, it seemed an obvious, if not particularly festive choice.

Paris and Other Disappointments

This book was totally a cover buy. Of course I've never been disappointed in Paris. Well, when I say never- sometimes a particular patisserie will be fermé on the day you go. That's disappointment right there. But that's a rookie error and you soon learn to check if where you're planning to go is randomly shut that day. 

Paris and Other Disappointments is a travel memoir. Adam's father, Tommy, was born in Germany, and came to Australia at age 2. Tommy had never been back. He would often comment "I'd bloody love to go to Europe". So one day Adam took his father at his word, and suggested a trip. Soon they were making preparations, and settling on an itinerary - Germany, France and London. Although you do have to wonder why his father wanted to go...

Though I struggled to find what he liked, I definitely knew what he didn't like. The arts were not for him, having never shown an interest in theatre, architecture, gardens, live music, painting, dance, literature, sculpture, poetry or history. I've never known him to go to a museum, probably because when you think about it it's just a 3D book that you have to walk around, and I knew where he stood on both books and walking. 

Well, I'm glad I won't ever have to travel with Adam's father. We wouldn't make good travel companions. I have travelled to Europe with elderly relatives, and it was great. But they were interested in all the things that Adam's father wasn't. Thankfully. It just took a bit more research, and asking the whereabouts of the l'ascenseur (lift), it's usually there somewhere, just well hidden. 

Even as we were first preparing for the trip, I knew finding things to do was going to become an issue. Not liking anything at all tends to eliminate possibilities at a fairly rapid rate, and a continent with such a rich history gave Dad an almost limitless supply of things to turn down. 

Adam was quite well travelled, and often travelled alone, but his family aren't big travellers. "To me it's a choice not to go overseas, because nowadays, with such cheap flights and accommodation packages available, it's so easy."

I'm not from a family of travellers. Mum and Dad both immigrated to Australia as babies - Dad from post-war Germany and Mum from India, where her father was stationed while serving in the British Army. It staggered me that, apart from my sister going to Japan on exchange in high school, 80 per cent of my family hadn't been overseas as adults. 

And Paris? They got off to a bad start. An overcrowded train from the airport into the city. Adam had booked a really bad AirBNB. No lift, and an absolute cesspit of an apartment. 

The bedrooms contained sheetlets mattresses, which in a past life must have been used to soak up spilled colostomy bags. 

Wow. You're never going to have a good stay anywhere you're staying in an apartment like that. 

Naturally, Adam explores the lure of European churches to the Antipodean traveller. 

I'm not a huge fan of either - of churches or paedophiles - and there's no way I'd ever visit a church in Australia expect for a wedding or christening.... In Europe churches have a magnificence that draws people into them, regardless of their denomination. I'm also more inclined ato have a look knowing I can leave whenever I want, without having to sit through my friends' self-written vows. I guess the ornate detail is also a drawcard, the churches decked out to show riches and wealth - effectively the casinos of their time. 

And so how did father and son get on? Pretty much like everyone who travels with someone. 

Life wasn't built for people to get along every second of every day. Overseas trips are worse, small annoyances heightened by the stress and expectation of travel, plus the close quarters, tension building like the single drops of water on the forehead of a torture victim. 

Adam Rosenbachs is an Australian comedian. His wasn't a name I knew particularly. Although he was a writer for Spicks and Specks so I'm sure I've seen his work. 

The Gap

I came across The Gap recently while browsing the new releases on one of my library e-audibook apps. I hadn't heard of it, or the author (or so I thought) but borrowed it immediately and was soon listening to it in the car and out on walks with the dog. 

The Gap of the title refers to a beautiful clifftop on the South Head of Sydney Harbour. It offers a wonderful view, and a lovely sea breeze. But it has long been a busy spot for those wishing to end their lives. And so it was in the Sydney Summer of 2007-8 when Benjamin Gilmour was an ambulance paramedic stationed at Bondi, Sydney's most famous beach, a short drive south from The Gap. 

At the highest point of the The Gap where the clifftop rises like a tower it is 90 metres to the sea. Tourists and day-trippers come in groups to stand at the wood and wire fence inhaling the sunrise. They chatter about nothing of consequence but are quickly made speechless by nature's might. I've seen them stand like people at a crossroads, suddenly conscious of their smallness. The Gap is a place of great change, new journeys, different paths but for others who come their hope is long lost. To them The Gap is a backdrop for the final act of life. It's the edge of the world from which they leave. Fifity or more go over each year from the top or further around where the fence is easier to scale. They do it at dawn, in the heaviest rain and on the quietest of nights. For us local paramedics the beauty up here is hard to admire.

The Gap was written at the time, but Benjamin Gilmour thought it was too sensitive to publish at the time, and it is only with the passage of time that he feels these stories can be told. I did wonder at the rather strong trigger warnings in the Introduction, about mental health, black humour and the need for it for emergency services workers at all levels. Having read the book I can fully understand it. 

What will never change is the trauma and death that paramedics are exposed to and the impact this can have on us and the way we manage our mental health. 

The manuscript was even assessed by psychologists, and changes made to soften imagery and remove explicit detail. At the beginning I was dismissive about this, but then I listened to the book. It's by no means soft or warm and fuzzy. There is a lot of death, a lot of it by suicide, but also trauma, heart attacks and other medical conditions. Benjamin Gilmour and his partner have a bad run of calls, and come to refer to their ambulance as the Suicide Truck, and feel that he is a Suicide Magnet. All while Gilmour and his (ambulance) partner John are going through the breakdown of their own personal relationships.

Gilmour is an author and filmmaker and he doesn't just write about a series of jobs he has attended as an ambo in Sydney, he takes a longer lens to look at his patients and their lives. 

As we leave the building I contemplate the lives that have ended here. The building is a repository of worn-out men and women with deeply tragic stories. Lives spoiled by drugs and alcohol, marriage breakups and mental illness.

It is not a cheery, postcard touristy version of Sydney that emerges from these pages. The Gap takes a long hard look at the very detrimental effects of shift work and sleep deprivation on ambos, who have a challenging job to begin with. Traumatic shared experiences at work creates close bonds among paramedics and other emergency services personnel. These experiences also take a great toll on the health and well being of those who respond to these calls. But they have great resilience, showing up for shifts when they can be hurting more than the people who have called them for help.

The cases are banal, but as soon as I'm chatting to my patients I'm in their lives and not in mine, and that's what I'm here for. 

At the time of writing most of the book Gilmour had not had a patient suffering an out of hospital cardiac arrest survive to hospital discharge. Not uncommon. In the introduction he says that has changed in the decade since, with better bystander CPR, and public access to defibrillators, that he has had some saves. Still survival of out of hospital cardiac arrest is around 10% in Australia.

"We tried our best, but he didn't pull through". It's a worn phrase that makes it sound like it's the old man's fault, as if he refused to come back. "We tried our best" sounds inadequate too. It may be true that we tried our best, but I wonder if trying is good enough. In our line of work where the opposite of success is death there's no prize for trying. 

Hmm, yes, but these people are already dead. There were several sections where Gilmour talked about the words we use at times like this. I have to speak to people frequently at these times in my own job, and I enjoyed his thoughts and perspective on the words we use. These are difficult times, for everyone. The ambos, the families and loved ones. Gilmour's partner John used to tell suicidal people that you don't have to kill yourself to get people to listen. I like that phrase.

I listened to the last third of the book in one afternoon. I hadn't intended to. I planned to listen for an hour or so while I was doing some weeding, but was unable to stop. I had tears streaming down my face for much of that last section. I finished off the remains of a bottle of red that night, and then had an extra glass for good measure. I had been planning to start watching Unbelievable that evening, but I chose a couple of episodes of Black Books instead as some much needed relief. 

Matty Morris did a sterling job of the audio narration, coping well with all the medical terms that necessarily lace a paramedic memoir. But I wish someone had given this poor Melbourne lad some help with the pronunciation of Sydney place names - Clovelly, Cahill Expressway, Vaucluse and more. In a book where the Eastern Suburbs Sydney location was such a major part of the story it would have been nice.

Benjamin Gilmour RN Lifematters interview 

My Year (So Far) in Nonfiction

Nonfiction November is about to take over the world again. Here in the blog world it is hosted by Doing Dewey, Julz Reads, Sarah's Bookshelves, Sophisticated Dorkiness and What's Nonfiction?

I watch a lot of Booktube too now and Nonfiction November is on over there this month hosted by A Book Olive and Non Fic Books.

It's fair to say that I'm having a pretty bad reading year. I've only read 49 books so far this year. I didn't really read anything over the past three or four months. I'm starting to work my way out of this Great Reading Slump of 2018 it seems, but it's still slow going. 

Checking my Goodreads tally I see that I've read 14 nonfiction books so far this year. I've also had a slow blogging year so I haven't blogged most of these books, and it seems I haven't rated them on Goodreads either. 

I've really enjoyed most of those 14 Nonfiction books. 

Week 1 Your Year in Nonfiction hosted by Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness (one of my favourite blog names ever)

What was your favourite nonfiction read of the year (so far)?

I think it would actually be my most recent nonfiction read, The Art of Living Alone & Loving It (see my review). 

I also really enjoyed The Art of Frugal Hedonism (see my review). Oh they're both The Art of ...

And this one is just fun, but rather fascinating. I love junior nonfiction.

I'm almost finished up with the audiobook of Leigh Sales' Any Ordinary Day, which is fabulous and will get a high rating from me. So much to think about in this one. 

I'm more than happy that three of those four books are Australian. And by Australian Women Writers too. 

Do you have a particular topic you've been more attracted to this year?

I've been reading around my tag of Reconsidering My Life and a lot of my reads have touched on that in various ways. Books about ways of living, and also financial matters. 

What nonfiction book have you recommended the most?

Probably The Trauma Cleaner (see my review). It has a lot broader appeal than my three favourites above. And it's Australian too!

What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

A few things. This is my second year participating in Nonfiction November, but I really only dabbled my toes in the waters last year. This year I'm hoping it will spur me on to read some of the nonfiction waiting for me on my shelves. I've got a few on the go at the moment that I'd like to get finished too. I also want to blog about some of the books that I've already read this year. Of course I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else reads, and finding lots of interesting new books and blogs. 

Cockatoo

I am SO terrible at TBRs - no sooner had I completed by Nonficition November 2017 TBR than I was in my local bookshop in a bit of a buying frenzy. I plucked this book off the shelves because it was so, so pretty, and very soon had it read. 

It's an unusual little book. A small palm sized book, priced for the impulse buy ($19.99, yes that is cheap in Australia). There is no author credited, just "with Bird Life Australia". It's an art book. It's a lesson about cockatoos.

There's lots of cool cockatoo facts. 

Most cockatoos are left footed.

I'm so going to have to watch out for that. 

Only female Black Cockatoos incubate eggs. The smaller cockies and corellas tend to share egg-sitting duties.

And some sad ones. 

Five of Australia's 14 cockatoo species have populations that are on the national threatened species list. 

I must say that I find this description from the Hardie Grant Gift website rather odious and unappealing. I do realise that it's a description for booksellers, but it makes it sound awful.

A contemporary design-conscious souvenir for international and local tourists. Featuring international and local illustrators. 

Cockatoo is a companion book to Koala (published last year) a book that I completely missed, but now of course would like to read. I am now firmly convinced that every book I read only serves to make my TBR grow ever bigger. 

Nonfiction November 2017 Week 2 Book Pairings

Here, slightly late, are my Nonfiction November Week 2 Book Pairings. This is such a fun concept. I've really enjoyed trawling my way through everyone's pairings over at Sarah's Book Shelves. 

A few weeks ago I started listening to the Moby Dick Big Read on a whim. I'd never given serious consideration to reading Moby Dick. It's too big, I don't like big books and I cannot lie. Anything over 500 pages is a big struggle for me. I don't like starting them. The Penguin Classics paperback of Moby Dick is 720 pages. That would take me quite some time. Literally months if I was to read a print version. But I was really keen to give a free podcast a go. And much to my surprise about a third of the way through I'm still really enjoying it, although they're just launching the boats for the first time and I'm really not looking forward to the grittier parts of whaling. 

My somewhat unexpected enjoyment of Moby Dick has made me ponder other things. Will I come to read Nathaniel Philbrick's Why Read Moby-Dick? I hope that I would if I get through Moby Dick, or perhaps the argument to read it is even stronger if I don't get through Moby Dick. And it's only 131 pages! Of course Nathaniel Philbrick also wrote In the Heart of the Sea, maybe I should read that too....

I read The Hate You Give a few months ago preparing to see Angie Thomas at Melbourne Writers Festival. You can listen to that session here. It was just as fabulous (and important) as everyone says.

I also saw Reni Eddo-Lodge speak at Melbourne Writers Festival in a fabulous talk with Benjamin Law. You can listen to it online here. I bought her book after I got home. 

Although I could finally get to reading Maxine Beneba Clarke's The Hate Race, which I bought last year, it's a memoir about growing up black in Australia.