John Baker’s Blog

First impression; taking it out of the envelope. It’s a real book. Bright cover, solid feel, nice spine and you can splay the pages and get a feel for the density of the print, length of paragraphs, etc.
All that is good. What is not so good is when you start reading you soon realise that [...]

Four Corporations Win Bad Product Awards
This year’s winners are:
* Coca-Cola - for continuing the international marketing of its bottled water, Dasani, despite admitting it comes from the same sources as local tap water.
* Kellogg’s - for the worldwide use of cartoon-type characters and product tie-ins aimed at children, despite high levels of sugar and salt [...]

Sully Prudhomme was awarded the first Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901. His best known poem was La vase brisé, of which the following is a translation by Pete Crowther:
The Broken Vase
A fan’s light tap
Was enough to chip
This flower vase
In which the roses
Now are dying.
No sound it made
But a hairline crack
Day after day
Almost [...]

Amis at the ICA:
Society does not question or interrogate Islamist values openly out of fear of becoming the target. (Martin) Amis, however, is the Dirty Harry of the literary world. Come on, mad mullah, make my day. ‘I want to be a target. There are no Switzerland positions here’, he said.
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From The Guardian’s world of [...]