Lazy Sunday Service

It's been a strange old week. I've spent most of it writing dictionary entries for the forthcoming Oxford Dictionary of Human Geography. I'm now up to L. I spent parts of Thursday evening and Friday doing media work in relation to the tragic death of a young boy on an unfinished estate. A truly awful accident. Hopefully the government will now step up their action in dealing with the health and safety issues relating to such estates. I also purchased a Kindle and started into the world of ebooks. My plan at the minute is to only buy ebooks I can't easily get as paper books. So far I've downloaded a couple of novels and collections of short stories. I've been dipping into the latter. Based on only reading the first couple of stories, an early favourite is Old School by Daniel B O'Shea, a collection of 14 stories in three parts: middle age, the golden years, the afterlife. Here's the blurb:

Bette Davis famously noted that "Old age ain't no place for sissies." In these stories the protagonists may not all be old, but ain't none of them young anymore. They're past the solipsism of youth, that grandiose narcissism that lets the young imagine the world as a stage devoted to their glories. Every character in Old School knows that life isn't a stage, it's a ring. And you'd better learn to take a punch, because life is the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world. You might land a shot here and there, but you are gonna get your ass beat and, in the end, you're going down for the count. Life is however-many-billions and 0, and each of us is just one more digit on the wrong end of that equation.

My posts this week
Seven shots of noir
Finally entered the world of e-books
Scattergun reading
Review of Or The Bull Kills You by Jason Webster
Damned if you do, damned if you don't: An Bord Pleanala and the Children's hospital
It's time to get serious about unfinished estates
Peppered tail