Carol Shields dies at 68:

Her last book, Unless, written when she knew she was probably dying, was an international success, nominated for many literary prizes, including the Booker, and the Orange, which she won in 1998 for Larry's Party.

Her eldest daughter, Anne Giardini, said: "She had many books left to write. We are bereft."

Shields was working on a novel, which would have been her 11th. It remains unfinished. In May she was the only living author voted on to a list of the 10 greatest novels by women.

This is an announcement of great sadness. I am just finishing her most recent novel at the moment, Unless, a very good read and far more pointed and angry (in a good way) than sweeter (and lovely) works like Larry's Party or The Stone Diaries. She had a beautifully adept way at capturing the tone and nuance of a moment, a feeling, a foible. Again and again, her prose gets a thought across just so, in a way that makes you sigh with pleasure and reread the line again. Yet her novels are very accessible, too, which perhaps at times made one not notice how superb her craft(wo)manship actually is -- or the slightly darker themes running just below the surface of her works.

I will celebrate her this evening with a glass of wine and by concluding her lovely novel . Sleep well, Ms Shields, and thanks for much readerly pleasure.

I've got a piece in the Times today (sub here; free here) on Dockers, the trousers that say, "I will never be CEO":

You know Dockers - the casual men's trousers (or in this case, one could use that perfect evocation of menswear blandness, "slacks") made by Levi Strauss. They come in every possible variation of khaki on the colour scale. Sometimes, a little daringly, they exit the khaki realm and land on the side of navy blue, or even black - albeit a faded, friendly, "hey guys!" kind of black, not the grimly sepulchral shade favoured by heavy metal bands and models.

Irish Times columnist Danny O'Brien has a magnificant piece on Perl and Python in today's paper. Be sure to read it if you can buy a copy of the paper or are a subscriber to Ireland.com.

Perhaps like politics and sausages - you shouldn't see computer languages being made. Or perhaps its better to know that this madcap world exists - to reassure yourself that, in amongst super-efficient capitalism and inhuman processes of the internet, there lies a human heart.