Authors: Marilyn Johnson
ISBN-13: 9780061431609, ISBN-10: 0061431605
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Date Published: February 2010
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Having made a name for herself penning memorable obituaries for the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Princess Diana, Jackie Onassis, and Johnny Cash for Life and other magazines, Marilyn Johnson takes a fascinating look back at the experience in The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries.
In This Book Is Overdue!-a romp through the ranks of information professionals who organize our messy world and offer old-fashioned human help through the maze-acclaimed author Marilyn Johnson celebrates libraries and librarians and discovers offbeat and eloquent characters in the quietest corners.
This is one of those books, in the vein of Mary Roach's Stiff (about human cadavers), that tackle a big topic by taking readers on a chapter-by-chapter tour of eccentric characters and unlikely locations…In her most absorbing passages, I felt as if I were back in the children's library, scrutinizing a volume of the World Book Encyclopedia, where the entry on "pachyderm" sat near the disquisition on "pachysandra," a kind of ground cover. Johnson's book carries the same kind of associative magic. Rather than taking us on a brisk, orderly march, she lets us ride on the swaying back of an elephant, glimpsing treasures glimmering through the fronds of pachysandra.