What is it with death at the moment? Last year we had Donald and Myfanwy Horne’s Dying: A Memoir (Penguin), and this month Deborah Crabtree reviews the key Picador title The Household Guide to Dying. Now from MUP comes Sweet Sorrow: A Beginners Guide to Death (May), in which ABC Radio National journalist Mark Wakely takes a look at mortality and all its attendant details. Topics range from the ‘memorial photography’ of the 1800s, in which the recently deceased were dressed up and photographed for posterity, to the seemingly small details (such as choice of coffin bouquets) which confront those planning farewells for the departed. Also looking at the subject is Dying to Know. Published late last year by Hardie Grant, the book is by Pilotlight founder Jane Tewson and co-author of the Sea Change television series Andrew Knight. ‘Like all of Jane’s projects its aim was to illuminate a subject that would benefit the community and get people thinking and talking about issues that are important,’ says Hardie Grant Books managing director Julie Pinkham. Having sold around 20,000 copies to date, ‘mostly reaching outside the book trade’ according to Pinkham, the authors are planning a re-launch mid-year. ‘It is highly visual with the text really comprising of thought buds, rather than huge slabs of text,’ says Pinkham. Finally, for a take on what comes afterwards, there’s Dearly Departed by Australian ‘medium’ Georgina Walker (A&U, April), on where loved ones go after they’ve died, and even what happens to pets when they ‘cross over’. So, if you’re dying to know more about the topic of the moment, there are quite a few titles to choose from, it would seem.

This article from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker