GULP: ADVENTURES on the ALIMENTARY CANAL (audiobook) by Mary Roach

Published by Tantor Audio in 2013.
Read by Emily Woo Zeller
Duration: 8 hours, 21 minutes.
Unabridged

Mary Roach focuses her often-humorous, always oddball approach to science on the human digestive tract in GULP, a book that always entertains, even if it doesn't always stay on topic.

To be fair, she stays in the general area of the topic. For example, when she talks about how much your sense of smell affects your sense of taste she goes into a long (and interesting and sometimes gross) look at the pet food industry and how they convince dogs and cats to eat gross food by making it smell really, really enticing. 

Topics include: saliva, how much a human stomach will actually hold, why lots of animals eat their own poop, why cows ruminate, the role of bacteria in digestion, enlarged colons, why prisoners sneak things into jail by putting them up their rectum but terrorists don't put bombs in the same place, why farts smell and, in an off-topic moment, she discusses if the Inuit actually do rub noses rather than kiss.

Emily Woo Zeller read this audiobook and did a wonderful job with it. This is a fun ride and Zeller read it with just the right amount of enthusiasm. Highly recommended (if you have a strong stomach!)

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  GULP by Mary Roach.

STIFF: THE CURIOUS LIVES of HUMAN CADAVERS by Mary Roach

Published by Tantor Audio in 2004
Read by Shelly Frasier
Duration: 8 hours, 5 minutes
Unabridged

One fact about life on this planet - we are all going to die. Mary Roach takes a look at what happens once we're dead in Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers and asks what happens next? She's not exploring the afterlife - she is looking, literally, at what happens to our bodies when we "shuffle off this mortal coil."

Roach explores what happens when you donate your body to science - everything from a medical school to a once-living crash test dummy. Or, you can donate your body to a mortuary school so prospective morticians can practice their future craft.

Maybe you don't want to donate your entire body. What happens if you just donate some of your organs?

What if you are not donating anything. What happens when you have a traditional funeral? How about if you are cremated? There are new ways to dispose of a body as well, including one that pretty much cooks the meat off of your bones and one that breaks you up and then mulches you into the earth.

This was a fascinating, entertaining, informative and often very funny book. Let's face it - being dead is sort of ridiculous. The reader, Shelly Frasier, is a natural. She read it so perfectly, with such an ironic tone, that I honestly thought that the author had read the book until I wrote this review. 

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: STIFF: THE CURIOUS LIVES of HUMAN CADAVERS by Mary Roach.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (audiobook) by Mary Roach

Enjoyable - offbeat, funny, informative, thought-provoking

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2010.
Read by Sandra Burr.
Duration: 10 hours, 27 minutes.
Unabridged.

The point of Mary Roach's Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void is not the technical challenges of sending an object to Mars. We have demonstrated that we can send a probe to Mars, operate it and do a bit of exploring.

No, this is about sending a human to Mars, a much more difficult proposition. Mary Roach deals with the following (and more) in her Packing for Mars:

-We eat, drink, and create bodily waste. How do we store enough food to make the trip to Mars?

-How do we deal with expelling bodily waste in a zero gravity environment (no toilets - everything would just float out!)

-What do we do with the waste? Can you recycle it back into food? Who would want to eat that?

-Can people actually live together in cramped quarters for months at a time with no break and not kill one another?

-What will zero gravity do to the human body during this trip?

-Can people actually have sex in a zero gravity environment? What if a pregnancy results - what will the fetus be like if it is developed in zero gravity?

-Zero gravity tends to create lots of nausea. How do we deal with it?

Mars, the red planet

-Can you propel yourself in space with flatulation? (sure, not a serious question, but now you want to know, don't you?)

-Personal hygiene in space. How stinky will that capsule be?

-What about dust that comes from sloughed off skin and hair? It is just going to accumulate all over the capsule.

-Can you bail out of a space capsule or shuttle if it has a bad take off or landing?

In this book you learn that the biggest challenge is, in Roach's words, "gravity and life without it." The 2nd issue, and it is a big one too, is size. The vehicle to Mars will be, by necessity, small. This means little storage, little elbow room and no place to go if nausea or escaping bodily waste become issues (her inclusion of the transcript of a space capsule conversation about free-floating "turds" is hilarious and serves to highlight that this has already been an issue that NASA has dealt with in the past).

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Packing for Mars.

Reviewed on October 21, 2010.