Sundays morsels

Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.

*** Crime writer Barbara Parker died yesterday, aged 62. I never had the pleasure of meeting her, but from everything other writers have said about her, that's my loss. I'm always sad when I learn of such events, I know she was beloved by writers that I knew and respect and they are feeling the loss today. What a shame. 62 is too damned young. The obit was written by Oline Cogdill, well known crime reviewer, who probably knew her as well as any newspaper columnist.

Barbara Parker RIP

*** Ha! I love a good Top Ten list, and this one's better than most. What are the Top Ten books people lie about reading? What a great idea. What's weird is that I actually have read 3 of the books on the list. I've read Orwell's 1984 (and I'm living it right now), Hawkings' A Brief History of Time (technically, I listened to this on unabridged audio, but I think that counts) and The Bible. I have also more or less read War and Peace, although I'm not 100% sure I've read it completely through.

Top Ten books you probably haven't read, but say you have

*** I note with regret that I once more missed the Dublin Book Festival this weekend. Great city with some great bookstores.

*** Let's file this under the category of: Building Inspectors Are A Good Idea. The Historical Archive of Cologne, Germany, collapsed last Tuesday, burying 1,000 years of priceless historical documents under tons of rubble, probably killing two people and leaving archivists wondering if anything can be salvaged.

So how does a building like this just collapse without notice? Or, were there warnings that were ignored? Does Germany have building inspectors? Considering how over-regulated Europe is these days one assumes that Germany has lots and lots of building inspectors. It boggles, it really does.

So much for the history