A Bookish Memento Mori
A shelfie of our Head Alien’s main section of funny books about death.
So I've started referring to one particular shelf here at Butterflies & Aliens North as my memento mori in books. Sounds better than "I have this growing collection of funny books about death that started with this one book of cartoons about unpleasant ways to die that still makes me laugh out loud every time I read it"...
But, really, there is much truth in both those statements.
On the one hand, this collection has ended up taking on the function of a memento mori, in a long philosophical tradition of “remembering you will die.” Having a tangible reminder of your mortality appears as a practice across many cultures and art forms. The latest iteration I have encountered is an app called WeCroak that, in keeping with a Bhutanese belief that contemplating death five times daily brings happiness, sends me a phone notification at five random moments throughout my day, reminding me of my mortality.
A recent notification received by our Head Alien from the WeCroak app on their phone. It reads “Don’t forget, you’re going to die. Open for a quote.”
But while the app takes a more meditative approach, our bookish memento mori… well… it takes the approach of laughing at death.
Because, bottom line, this collection started because these books made us laugh. Hard.
At times that laughter is uncomfortable, other times a bit dark, but ultimately is, remarkably often, just pure and unrestrained.
And in the end, it does come down to putting things – all the things – in perspective.
Weirdly in that spirit, but also to end this post on a nerdier note, an extra bit of fun from this rather specific genre categorization comes from the fact that it has also foregrounded an ongoing librarian challenge, in that the shelfie above does not actually include our full collection of funny books about death. Two in particular, that are included in the gallery below but not in the shelfie above, currently live in our alphabet book collection as described in an earlier post. One will be easy to pick out, the other perhaps not.
Then we also have a separate section of zombie books, all of which by definition involve death but some of which also bring on the laughs. One of them – Ten Little Zombies: A Love Story – we’ve profiled before. And a full shelfie post will be sure to follow at some point in the future.
But in the meantime, please enjoy this gallery and let us know if you’d like us to take a closer virtual look at any of the books below. In keeping with the long tradition of memento mori, we’re always ready to do a deeper dive into this collection… and our mortality.
Happy Reading!
– Winston
[ update: a current list of our Memento Mori Collection is now also available on The Catalogue Projects page. ]
[ update 2: we posted about a new addition to this collection, linked here ]
