Obit: Inspiring Stories of Ordinary People Who Led Extraordinary Lives | 
 enlarge | Author: Jim Sheeler
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 46144
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 0143113836
Dewey Decimal Number: 808
EAN: 9780143113836
ASIN: 0143113836
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: new book
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Product Description
Like Everything I Really Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten, or Tuesdays with Morrie, Obit is a wise and deeply moving book that illuminates the human condition. For ten years, Jim Sheeler has scoured Colorado looking for subjects whose stories he will tell for the last time. Most are unknowns, but that doesnt mean theyre nobodies. Their obituaries are sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, and chock full of life lessons as taught by the people we all pass on the street every day. And thanks to Sheelers brilliant and compassionate prose, its not too late to meet them.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Obit July 15, 2008
The book is a quick read, didn't cry at any of the stories as I thought I would :-) but the stories where o.k., not as "gripping" as I thought they would be as I could proably find some people who did alot for their community, sacrificed for their children etc. All in all, a fast read & was written well.
 Obit by Jim Scheeler July 6, 2008
Outstanding compilation of ways to handle grief and a great and gentle way of honoring the fallen.
Obit is more than just dead people June 18, 2008
Jim Sheeler's Obit is a great insight into ordinary people's lives. Jim is a picturesque writer who won a Pulitzer Prize for this book. It is an easy and entertaining read that will get you to think twice about how you live your life. Then when you finish this book try his new book Final Salute -- a much more somber yet important story that needed to be told.
 De mortuis nil nisi bonum September 10, 2007
3 out of 12 found this review helpful
A friend of mine sent me this book to include in my annual write-up of the "most inadequate blurbs." OK, this one is by Westword, whatever that is, and it reads in its entirety: "Many of Sheeler's subjects are lifeless, but his prose certainly isn't." As a blurb, it's distinctive on two counts: you don't see many books blurbed with the equivalent of "Not Lifeless!" and secondly, as a sentence, it has the most misleading use of the word "Many" I've ever seen. What do you think Westword was intending by using the word "Many." If he had read the book he would have known that it is a large collection of obituaries. There aren't a few live people mixed in for variety. No, it's all dead, all the time--I should say, all lifeless all the time. Anyhow I got to reading the book and I must say, it is certainly worth a read.
Jim Sheeler is no Alden Whitman (the man who for so many years wrote obituaries for the NY Times of the most famous people on earth). I take it that he prides himself on doing the little people, the meek of the earth, and his beat is Denver, Boulder, and the surrounding lands of Colorado. I don't know how he selects his subjects, but he writes on and on about their lives, their families, the things they did over the years, and how sad it is that they've died. I found myself sniffling a bit, especially over the young ones, one boy died at 15, a budding opera buff and enthusiast who had a fatal heart ailment, or another boy, the bad boy of his little village, who died overseas serving his country.
But strangely I found myself growing cold to the deaths of a whole pack of country folk. It's Sheeler's fault, he just doesn't seem able to animate these people, make them come to life for the reader. All of them have the same format, and about the same number of words, so a profile of a nonagenarian clocks in at about the same length as a child, giving rise to the suspicion that, with all his bruited tenderness, Sheeler's just cranking them out like loaves of bread. And sorry, despite the subtitle, I didn't feel the "extraordinariness" of any of these people's lives. Says on the front of the book he won the Pulitzer Prize. For what? I ask. Was it Colorado's turn?
OBIT August 4, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
OBIT. Inspiring Stories of Ordinary People who Led Extraordinary Lives. This book is reminiscent of well written Readers Digest short stories. Obit will force the reader into reflection on one's own fleeting life. When the time comes and none shall escape it. Will the last things said about you just be a "footnote on the backside of life"? Or will the reading of your obituary bring a tear to a strangers face?
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