Sick Boy, Julian Barnes, Little Prince, the internet and Alexander McCall Smith
Sick Boy and Co are back, according to The Independent - excellent. Isn’t Begby simply the scariest character ever? There are many people like him in the pubs. Go to any provincial market town in the UK and wander around at around 11.30pm on a Friday night.
The Times profiles Julian Barnes.
Here are five things we didn’t know about the novelist Julian Barnes. He was a “zealous and unflagging” masturbator in his youth. He has never been to a normal church service. He is deaf in his left ear. His father never said “I love you” to him. And he fears death so acutely that he wakes in the night beating his pillow and screaming, “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh no!”
Oddball story - a former German World War II fighter pilot has claimed he shot down French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince. How could he tell when he’s flying at 500 mph in a mid-air dogfight?
This one isn’t book-related but still interesting. Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the Internet as we know it, talks about the evils of tracking people on the Web. Remember, he’s the ultimate open source guy - he could have patented the Internet and think how much money he would have made.
More from The Independent…. Alexander McCall Smith is blasted by some charity over racial stereotyping. Just like Irvine Welsh stereotypes Scottish people as drunks and druggies? Do me a favour.
I’d love to say there was something interesting from the American papers but there wasn’t.
