49 Books Like All the Ghosts in the Machine

I've been a huge fan of mortician Caitlin Doughty for years, and this nonfiction book (which sees Doughty traveling from Japan to Colorado to Indonesia, looking at different things people do with the bodies of their deceased loved ones and how it helps them cope with loss) made me laugh like no other death book, and it taught me a lot, too.

I was especially intrigued by the chapter on human composting: the idea that it's possible to let a body decompose naturally in the earth, so it turns to compost. When my father died I had him buried in a compostable coffin made of banana tree, without any preservatives, and I like the idea of his body feeding flowers and bugs and becoming part of the harmonious web of life.

I love this book partly because it’s a great source of facts and statistics about death and dying throughout the ages.

However it also tells a compelling story of how dying has changed: from short lives often ended abruptly by accident or infectious disease, to what sociologists call ‘the predictable death trajectory’ of gradual death from the diseases of old age and modern lifestyles.

I’m also intrigued by the author’s vision of death and dying in the future: maybe medical advances will even conquer death itself.

Such an elegantly written exploration of landscapes of the afterlife, where people in the past believed that souls went to after death, and how those beliefs then shaped funeral customs.

The author evinces an excellent grasp of human nature, especially when discussing the Reformation and how people often clung tenaciously to old beliefs and customs, which helped them make sense of human mortality and loss.

Roaming across the country and over several centuries, this book is packed with quirky, charming examples of how people maintain relationships with their dead.  

This classic study of the 1832 Anatomy Act is a great combination of scholarly history writing and a call for social justice.

It recounts how the Act solved the problem of corpses being stolen for medical research–by instead appropriating the bodies of poor people who had died in the workhouses. Abuses are still happening: Richardson links the Anatomy Act to the 1990s Alder Hey scandal.

This book reminds me how important it is to keep institutions that deal with the dead accountable–and to know our rights when the time comes.

I consider the author to be a thought leader among believers and has a fascinating reflection on how the digital world, and in particular, social media, has transformed our culture and the damage it has done.

He reflects on how it is numbing our minds, distorting our values, and eroding our spiritual and emotional well-being. He encourages Christians to resist digital addiction by pursuing wisdom, depth, and real-life community. He has a compelling critique of digital culture and a redemptive vision for reclaiming our attention, cultivating discernment, and living faithfully in an age of noise and distraction.

This book has helped me have an even more comprehensive understanding of the serious spiritual ramifications that social media and our devices bring and how they impact us on a soul level. 

Birkerts’ essays make me beautifully sad and newly defiant. Like me, he’s an analog native living in a digital world who has felt his ability to concentrate on the written word erode over the years.

But boy, can he write: “Imagination, the one feature that connects us with the deeper sources and possibilities of being, thins out every time another digital prosthesis appears and puts another thin layer of sheathing between ourselves and the essential givens of our existence, making it just that much harder for us to grasp ourselves as part of an ancient continuum.” To the typewriter, I go!

Media producers, digital designers, educators, child psychologists – professionals with different kinds of expertise and experience have different insights to offer.

I find it fascinating how these insights converge in this book on a vision of childhood that I can really support – children are seen as active agents making sense of their digital world, but also in need of thoughtful mentoring and guidance from parents, educators, and media producers.

Unlike some books which forget that media are not just tech but also content, this book really engages with the kinds of cultural representations that now populate children’s lives and imaginations. Of course there are differences between the authors, so this book offers plenty of food for thought to the reader.

All the essays are short, so you can get the gist of an argument and further reading in just a few pages – and each one has something new… show more.

When you feel completely overwhelmed at work, with no time or headspace to reflect, then this book is extremely helpful.

I don’t use bullet journalling all the time, but it is my go-to system when I am swamped and want to regain a sense of control and purpose. If you have never journalled then this book is a fantastic resource to get you scribbling, noticing and shifting. Even without engaging in the journalling practice, this book is really motivational and gets you in the right mindset to achieve.

It’s a fantastic book for overcoming overwhelm and tackling your never-ending to do lists. 

Tap, Click, Read was one of the first books to describe reading with screens in a balanced and measured way. I liked that the authors engaged with a range of research studies and outlined the significant potential of digital books for children’s literacy development, particularly if the books are designed with research principles in mind. The book inspired me to write in jargon-free language when communicating research to non-academic audiences. I loved the many examples in the book illustrating how young children tap, click and indeed read with modern interactive screens.

LeGrice was a founder of the London Filmmakers’ Co-op in 1968 and has worked ever since as a film and video maker, teacher, and writer. His book collects a large number of theoretical and critical essays on a range of topics, from film as material to the way films variously position the spectator as a consumer and/or self-conscious critic, to comparisons between film and digital media, in aesthetic, technological, and ecological terms. The essays are always approachable, even when he is discussing more abstract theoretical problems. Many examples are discussed.