Bad taste highly amusing in ’10 Ways to Recycle a Corpse’

So, after paging through “10 Ways to Recycle a Corpse,” do I know how to recycle a corpse?

And, maybe more to the point, should I?

The answers would be no and no — definitely and probably.

It’s fitting that “10 Ways,” a compendium by Karl Shaw, should begin with a quote from Dorothy Parker, ”A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.” The ever-amusing Parker certainly was adept at finding humor in the absurdities of life, and so, it seems, is Shaw.

Among this compilation of lists are quite a few that are definitely in bad taste, “5 Famous People With Irregular Genitalia” and “Gone With the Wind: 10 Sufferers of Flatulence”; they’re best suited, I think, to the 13-year-old boy down the street.

Yet beyond its train-wreck-fascination potential, “10 Ways” contains enough truly interesting information that it can be difficult to put down. Could you, for example, name 10 pop records whose subject was premature death? Or 10 classical composers who didn’t reach their 40th birthdays? Ten things that could get you hanged in 19th-century Britain? (Cutting down a tree and associating with gypsies are among the latter.) See? “10 Ways” is even educational.

The best thing about it, though, is its organization into subjects such as "Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know," which enable an amusing voyeuristic experience for the reader.

And if I ever do feel the need to recycle a corpse, the 10 ways are in Chapter Nine.