With the possible exceptions of pickleball and gossip, the habitual reading of obituaries may be the favorite sport of older people. After a certain age, we begin to wonder how others have spent their time in what Melville, in “Moby-Dick,” summed up as “this strange mixed affair we call life.” Did they, as Melville went on to say, feel “this whole universe [to be] a vast practical joke” at nobody’s expense but their own? Were they true to the dreams of youth? Did they — will we — regret the roads not taken? Chekhov argued that in the end only a god can distinguish between success and failure in life.

Which is why the best obituaries, those that are most enjoyable to read, juxtapose obvious public accomplishments with the sheer strangeness of people’s lives. In 2011, The Washington Post’s Matt Schudel memorialized Irvin Leigh Matus, who lived on the edge of destitution, cadged food from cocktail parties on Capitol Hill and for a while “spent his nights sleeping at a construction site behind the Library of Congress.” Nonetheless, Irv — whom I knew and miss — published two deeply researched, well-received books about Shakespeare. One, “Shakespeare: In Fact,” is still in print as a Dover paperback. As good obits constantly remind us, human beings are always more surprising than you think.

I’ve read The Post’s obituarists since the days of J.Y. Smith — whose daughter Yeardley is the voice of television’s Lisa Simpson — and Richard Pearson, who said “God is my assignment editor.” They have worthy successors in Adam Bernstein, Emily Langer, Brian Murphy and Harrison Smith. Theirs is a tough job, as I well know, having written the occasional obit myself. I recently looked up what I’d said in 2012 about Gore Vidal and paused over this section:

“In print or on television — he was a frequent talk-show guest — the worldly Mr. Vidal provoked controversy with his laissez-faire attitude toward every sort of sexuality, his well-reasoned disgust with what he called American imperialism and his sophisticated cynicism about love, religion, patriotism and other sacred cows.

“He took an acerbic view of American leadership. ‘Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books,’ he once quipped, ‘and there is some evidence they cannot read them either.’”

If I were writing Vidal’s obit today, I wouldn’t call him “cynical” so much as clear-eyed and, given the current political scene, prophetic.

Among American newspapers, the New York Times can be justly proud of past obituarists like Margalit Fox, now a best-selling writer of nonfiction, and the late Alden Whitman, who collected some of his finest pieces in “Come to Judgment.” Still, as Marilyn Johnson points out in “The Dead Beat,” her study of the modern obit, this biographical subgenre first came into its own during the 1980s when two English newspapers abandoned sycophancy and reverent clichés for stylishness and wit.

At the Independent, James Fergusson instituted signed pieces from people with special knowledge about the deceased, then gave what they wrote an eye-catching illustration and layout. For instance, adventure novelist Alistair Maclean (“The Guns of Navarone” and much else) was memorialized by Ian Chapman, the editor who had discovered him. When Samuel Beckett died, his British publisher, John Calder, and his biographer, James Knowlson, teamed up to recall the death-obsessed author of “Waiting for Godot.” Prominent figures from the world of fine printing or rare books were honored by no less than Nicolas Barker, editor of the Book Collector.

In contrast, the Daily Telegraph kept to a policy of anonymity in its obits, but Hugh Massingberd insisted that they be “a good read, a lively stimulating story,” in effect anecdotal and gossipy. Both papers also sought out little-known figures who had nonetheless made some unusual contribution to our times or added to what Samuel Johnson dubbed “the gaiety of nations.”

The Telegraph quickly acquired a well-deserved reputation for its sly but somehow affectionate jabs. The 3rd Lord Moynihan “provided, through his character and career, ample ammunition for critics of the hereditary principle.” In a postscript about artist Adrian Daintrey, the novelist Anthony Powell noted that Daintrey shared painter Augustus John’s “wholehearted admiration for the opposite sex, many of whom showed their appreciation in the most practical manner.”

Both quotations are from the “The Daily Telegraph Book of Obituaries: A Celebration of Eccentric Lives,” edited by Massingberd. This volume was followed by four others devoted to “Heroes and Adventurers,” “Entertainers,” “Rogues” and “Twentieth Century Lives.” In “Entertainers,” the entry on Liberace opens with a breathtaking factoid, one that underscores the bizarre nature of fame and celebrity: “Liberace, the flamboyant American popular pianist who has died age 67, was the world’s single highest paid performer throughout the 1960s and 1970s.” The actress Hermione Gingold, a regular in Stephen Sondheim’s musicals, “had an endearing individual approach to life. In New York she was regularly seen rummaging through other people’s dustbins.” The account of actor Wilfrid Hyde-White – best known for playing Colonel Pickering in the film version of “My Fair Lady” with Rex Harrison – includes this wonderfully understated dig: “In ‘You Did It,’ the song they sang after the ball, Hyde White discovered the same ability as his co-star to transcend the demands of musicality.”

In Johnson’s book, “The Dead Beat,” she reports on a talk by Massingberd in which he “translated” some of the Telegraph’s more coded phrases into straightforward English. For instance, “Affable and hospitable at every hour” actually means “chronic alcoholic.” “Gave colorful accounts of his exploits” genteelly replaces “liar.” Sometimes these delicate phrases can remain cryptic. As Massingberd tells Johnson, “‘He was unmarried’ could mean anything from, well, ‘he was unmarried,’ to ‘a lifetime spent cruising the public lavatories of the free world.’”

Many older Washingtonians will particularly enjoy the volume titled “Rogues,” which includes entries on the notorious journalist Henry Fairlie (who popularized the term “the establishment”) and Pamela Harriman, who “was proudly described by her second husband as ‘the greatest courtesan of the century.’” Yet surely, Barbara Skelton, also included in “Rogues,” might be her equal as a femme fatale, given the pantherine Skelton’s ability to besot men as varied as Egypt’s King Farouk, book publisher George Weidenfeld and New York editor Robert B. Silvers.

As with strong stylists like P.G. Wodehouse or Raymond Chandler, it’s wise to space out one’s enjoyment of Telegraph obits, lest they start to seem too clever by half. I’ve recently begun to dip into the polished mini-essays in “The Economist Book of Obituaries,” edited by Keith Colquhoun and Ann Wroe. Did you know that romance novelist Barbara Cartland had the longest entry in “Who’s Who?” When I read the opening to the entry for crime boss Joseph Bonanno, it seemed chillingly familiar:

“A discovery made by Joseph Bonanno when he was quite young was that in a democracy it is possible to construct a criminal organization largely immune from the law. The American constitution with its constraints designed to protect citizens from unfair prosecution could also be used to shield criminals providing there was enough money available to employ clever lawyers to manipulate the system. Confident of his protection, Mr. Bonanno assembled an empire of crime with a turnover of billions of dollars. Despite the best efforts of the state, Mr. Bonanno was never convicted of a serious crime.” He died in 2002 at age 97.

In the end, these short accounts of the dotty, criminal, heroic and uniquely talented drive home that obituaries aren’t about death. They are about the glorious messiness of being human. If you were to give them a headline, each could bear the same one, the three-word phrase erroneously but immortally associated with Australian bushranger Ned Kelly as he was about to be hanged: “Such is life.”