The other day I was charmed when I visited RickLibrarian's blog site* and found that he had devoted an entire post to the subject of picture sections in biographies. I was enthralled because pictures are sometimes my favorite parts of biographies; no matter what, I'll always flip to the picture section and read all of the captions carefully before reading the book.
Rick is a librarian and the author of the fabulous nonfiction readers' guide Real Lives Revealed: A Guide to Reading Interests in Biography, and he has posted many times before about various topics in biography. I love his attention to the detail and nuances of biographical writing; this is the sort of in-depth studies librarians should be doing of all types of nonfiction, although I know that no one has the time anymore for that sort of thing. (And if you work in a library, you're mainly just too busy trying to keep the printers unjammed, unsavory characters from following children into bathrooms, and explaining to patrons why you are not, in fact, really qualified to do their taxes for them for free.)
Have a good weekend, all, and happy spring.
*I was further charmed this morning when I visited his site and found a positive review for Nancy Pearl's and my new reference volume Now Read This III. Thanks, Rick!
Very cool!
Posted by: Marianne | 19 March 2010 at 04:09 PM
Thanks. It was a lot of fun working on the biographies' pictures idea. I'd like to take it back to 1969, too, but few of those books are still in our public libraries. I'd have to set aside time to go to a university library.
Posted by: Rick | 20 March 2010 at 11:34 AM