"People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It."

Oddest book title of the year. Odder than "Rhino Horn Stockpile Management: Minimum Standards and Best Practices from East and Southern Africa."

That rhino horn title describes something real people are actually doing. "People Who Don't Know They're Dead," however, appears to be an insanely hostile self-help book -- that is to say, a book intended to help that will only make matters worse. Oh, no, wait. Here it is on Amazon:

In People Who Don't Know They're Dead, Gary Leon Hill tells a family story of how his Uncle Wally and Aunt Ruth, Wally's sister, came to counsel dead spirits who took up residence in bodies that didn't belong to them. And in the telling, Hill elucidates much of what we know, or think we know, about life, death, consciousness, and the meaning of the universe.

When people die by accident, in violence, or maybe they're drunk, stoned, or angry, they get freeze-framed. Even if they die naturally but have no clue what to expect, they might not notice they're dead. It's frustrating to see and not be seen. It's frustrating to not know what you're supposed to do next. It's especially frustrating to be in someone else's body and think it's your own. That's if you're dead. If you're alive and that spirit has attached itself to you, well that's a whole other set of frustrations.

Hill has woven this fascinating story with the history and theory of what happens at death, with particular emphasis on the last 40 years and the work of various groundbreaking thinkers whose work helps inform our idea of what it is to live and to die.

Well, that's just nutty, but not in the way I imagined. I was thinking of a writer who viewed his fellow human beings as the equivalent of zombies, with no real mental life worth respecting.