This month we're reading From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty.

As a practising mortician, Caitlin Doughty has long been fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies. In From Here to Eternity she sets out in search of cultures unburdened by such fears. In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather's mummified body. She meets Bolivian atitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls), and discovers the Japanese ritual of kotsuage, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved-ones' bones from cremation ashes.

We have no theme or topic for what we read. Attendees each nominate a book for next month, and the final selection is made by a poll on our SALA Facebook group.

We meet the 1st Sunday of each month.

Julie picked the book and will host the discussion at Intelligentsia Coffee in Pasadena.