Miss me?

Good day bookies! Stand by for news and comment.

So, did you miss me? Sorry, but now that the Memphis Tigers have hired a new coach I can get back to book blogging.

*** Michael Crichton may be dead, but reports are that he has new books coming out anyway. It seems he finished a rollicking historical tale of pirates in 17th century Jamaica that no one knew about. And finished means finished. Apparently he even edited it, so it's pretty much ready to go. Reports are for an initial print run of 1 million copies. The second book is a new thriller centered on technology. This one is only 1/3 finished and will need someone to do the last 2/3. No writer has been hired yet.

*** I'm not a video game guy, which is a good thing because if I were I would never get anything done at all. Those kinds of entertainments really appeal to me and I could spend all day every day playing games. But for those of you who love 'Halo', Tor Books is bringing out a trilogy based on the games, written by veteran Greg Bear.

Halo becomes a book trilogy

*** Schindler's List has been found. No, not the DVD of the movie you lost a few years ago and found under the couch, the real list, the one that inspired the movie. In Australia, of all places. How such historical documents travel around the world is often more interesting than the documents themselves. Australian writer Thomas Kenneally used the list to write his Booker Prize winning novel Schindler's Ark, from which Steven Spielberg developed his movie, and the list was found in a box of his manuscripts that had been donated to a library. Incredible, when you think about it. A list typed up in desperation during the final days of the war, by a man few at the time had ever heard of, is now safely ensconced in an Australian library as proof of what the man did for humanity.

Schindler really did have a list, and here it is

*** In my last blog entry (yes, yes, I know, you can't remember back that far. Everybody's a critic) I mentioned the passing of John Hope Franklin, a gracious gentleman who many considered the historian of the Civil Rights Movement. Here's a nice obituary of the man, much better than I could ever do.

John Hope Franklin

*** Finally, just because Hunter S. Thompson is dead doesn't mean he won't have his revenge on all of us. The Rum Diaries is being developed into a movie and the Doctor is being played by, who else?, Johnny Depp. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was really not the book to make into a movie, but this one might be. Profane weirdness is almost assured and that, of course, is a good thing.

Don't look now, but Hunter S. is coming back