Archive for the 'Taphophile Book Review' Category

Taphophile Book Review: Mortician Diaries

March 23rd, 2010

I do not know exactly what I was expecting from 80 year-old June Nadle's memoirs about her decades in the funeral business, Mortician Diaries:The Dead-Honest Truth from a Life Spent with Death, but I was charmed to find her a tender yet strong, sensible, and introspective woman who - rather than be made cynical by her daily dances with death or seeing human tragedy (like the death of young people or babies) constantly - used her experiences to make her a more compassionate, life-affirming person. I finished this book wanting to meet June Nadle and have her over for tea. She is simply an intelligent, strong, and endearing woman that you feel privileged to have met as you turn the last page of her memoir.

She has managed to write about what some would consider an - at best, undesirable, and to most, a disturbing - job in a beautiful, uplifting way. There is little that is dismal in this book; quite a profound statement for a work that is almost exclusively about death and dying. Even when Nadle is retelling the most tragic stories, she always finds and shares a silver lining or muses that, at the very least, we must remember never to take life for granted; indeed, she reminds us that life is a beautiful, precious, fleeting thing.

In this way, June Nadle's treatise on working as an undertaker was, surprisingly, much more an affirmation of life than a narrative on death.

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Taphophile Book Review: One Foot in the Grave

February 29th, 2008

One of the first draws I had to One Foot in the Grave: Secrets of a Cemetery Sexton by Chad Daybell was a review by none other than Find A Grave founder, Jim Tipton.

Tipton writes:

Finally, a book that glibly exposes the often funny, always poignant truth behind the life of an undertaker.

Touche. Daybell writes about his tenure as cemetery sexton for the local burial grounds of a small community in Utah nestled in the Rocky Mountains. In his five years as sexton, and preceding two years as a part time worker there, Daybell experienced a number of interesting, quirky, and usually fascinating occurrences. It's hard to tell which stories were more strange - those involving the living or those involving the dearly departed!

You'll find anecdotes of both in Daybell's charming and frank expose on the life of a dedicated cemetery worker. I often found myself shaking my head in disbelief or laughing right out loud at some of the bizarre tales Daybell shared about kooky people and restless spirits. Some of his tales are touching, while others are outright scary (I'll admit to a number of chills, and I'm fairly unshakable).

I thoroughly enjoyed this romp through a cemetery worker's life, and the trials, tribulations, ups and downs, scares and smiles that go along with it. Daybell's website's blurb about the book, "This is a collection of true graveyard stories you won't be able to put down", is not false advertising in the least. I read it in one sitting - often pausing to re-read, aloud, some of the wilder passages to my boyfriend.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys learning about the goings-on of graveyards or is interested in what it's actually like to work in a cemetery. Daybell also goes about quashing some age-old myths about burial grounds and provides a wealth of information that even I, a seasoned cemetery-lover, was unaware of. Case in point - even I was surprised to learn that rowdy teenagers nor cantankerous spirits were to blame for the repeated disappearance of grave flowers, trinkets, and statues.

Curious? That and so much more awaits you in this fun and frank work. Daybell writes in an effortless, outright, friendly manner - I often felt I was listening to an old friend regaling me with tales about his job while we shared laughs over a cup of tea. It was one of those books that you feel disappointed to finish - wishing there were still more stories and more time to spend with the author who has been entertaining you for the last few hours.

Grab your copy of One Foot in the Grave today and spend some time getting to know Chad Daybell and learn about his delightful and forever-interesting job as cemetery sexton. You'll be glad you did.