John Baker’s Blog

This from PEN World Voices: Rushdie, Eco, and Vargas Llosa by Dorothy W. at Metaxu Cafe:
Then Lopate asked a couple questions solicited on index cards from the audience; the first question, asking the writers to describe their writing methods, got only boos from the audience because of its banality, and I was delighted to see [...]

A panel at the PEN World Voices session came up with the following titles:
Antonio Muñoz Molina: Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
Catherine Millet: The Lily of the Valley by Honoré de Balzac
Yousef al-Mohaimeed: first the Arabian Nights, then poetry (including haikus), and then, of all things Nikos Kazantzakis Zorba the Greek
Olivier Rolin: Under the Volcano by [...]

American poet, Gary Snyder was recently awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize - a $100,000 lifetime achievement award.
This is one of his poems:
For a Stone Girl at Sanchi
half asleep on the cold grass
night rain flicking the maples
under a black bowl upside-down
on a flat land
[...]

LibraryThing’s list of books tagged unread by its members is fascinating reading. Here’s the top ten, but the rest of this very long list is even more revealing:
Most often tagged unread
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (236/9020)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (211/8930)
One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (183/11948)
Crime and punishment [...]