Saturday, despite the date

Good morning bookies! Stand by for news.

This is Saturday's update, regardless of the weirdness of Googleland time.

*** Paul Brickhill wrote a book about a heroic event of WW2, The Great Escape, in which a large group of mostly British POWs escape from Stalag Luft III, a German prisoner of war camp. I remember reading this book as a kid and that copy is still in a box somewhere around here. The book was then made into a terrific film, a British film, which was then made into a thrilling American film (in which Americans played a much bigger part than in reality.) The US film starred James Garner, Sir Richard Attenborough, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson...and was written by two of our great novelists, James Clavell and W.R. Burnett.

The last survivor of the actual Great Escape had died in Portugal. Wing Commander Tim Thomas has suffered from a long illness. For my part the most encouraging thing is that he was living in such a lovely country as Portugal, hopefully making his final years happy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1078662/Last-survivor-Great-Escape-camp-dies-87.html

*** Yesterday in the Memphis Commercial Appeal there was a nice article about US troops supplying books to the children of Baghdad. I was going to link to it and make some nice comments about our local paper doing something right for a change, but, of course, this front page story wasn't on their website. So instead let me link to a very worthy project that I learned about while searching the net for the afore-mentioned article.

Books for Baghdad is exactly the sort of thing the USA is known for, generosity not only of wallet but of spirit. I am mightily impressed.

http://www.booksforbaghdad.org/

*** The Memphis Commercial Appeal today had a nice write-up on one of our very own bookies, Karin Morley, who recently opened The English Major Book Store in midtown. Karin has the official BBG stamp of approval, whether she wanted it or not, but the ink is washable.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/oct/18/it-speaks-volumes/