The Book of the Dead

Book 30 of my 2023 Reading Challenge

read from March 9 - 19

The Book of the Dead: Lives of the Justly Famous and the Undeservedly Obscure

by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson

Summary (via Goodreads)

Following their Herculean-or is it Sisyphean?-efforts to save the living from ignorance, the two wittiest Johns in the English language turn their attention to the dead.
As the authors themselves say, “The first thing that strikes you about the Dead is just how many of them there are.” Helpfully, Lloyd and Mitchinson have employed a simple-but ruthless-criterion for inclusion: the dead person has to be interesting.
Here, then, is a dictionary of the dead, an encyclopedia of the embalmed. Ludicrous in scope, whimsical in its arrangement, this wildly entertaining tome presents pithy and provocative biographies of the no-longer-living from the famous to the undeservedly and-until now-permanently obscure. Spades in hand, Lloyd and Mitchinson have dug up everything embarrassing, fascinating, and downright weird about their subjects’ lives and added their own uniquely irreverent observations.
Organized by capricious categories-such as dead people who died virgins, who kept pet monkeys, who lost limbs, whose corpses refused to stay put-the dearly departed, from the inventor of the stove to a cross-dressing, bear-baiting female gangster finally receive the epitaphs they truly deserve. 

My Opinion

2 stars

It was interesting to note the random details that stick out and remain as one's legacy as time passes.  There were also lots of virgins - could be coincidental, could be that it stuck out as a characteristic each time since it's not usually mentioned, or it could be there were more people that die virgins than I realized in the past (or even currently).

Although there were pockets of interesting people and/or categories, the book was overall more of a miss than a hit for me.  It felt dense and there were so many people mentioned I don't walk away feeling like I've learned much about anything.  This could be a good research tool though - I would recommend taking on shorter sections and/or pausing between people to reorient yourself (there aren't really built-in pauses so make your own).