Good morning bookies! It's Saturday. Stand by for news.

*** Studs Terkel died yesterday at age 96. I was not widely read of his works, but I did read The Good War and found it a terrific example of oral history, very straight-forward and honest. Certainly they don't make them like him anymore, an activist with a love of country that surpassed all else. He wasn't to my taste most of the time, but that might be to his credit.

*** The International Horror Guild Awards were announced on Halloween and the names of the winners were all among the familiar. Peter Straub won the Living Legend award and Dan Simmons won the Best Novel Award for The Terror. As any Simmons fan can tell you he's a pretty remarkable writer. Whatever genre he's working in, be it SFF, Horror or really hard-boiled crime (to this day Joe Kurtz remains a favorite character of mine) the quality of his work is top-notch. I also like the award category of 'Long Fiction', in place of 'novellette' or 'novella'.

http://www.locusmag.com/2008/News_Awards_IHG_Winners.html