John Baker’s Blog

A new site, Top Author Blogs, is looking to incorporate as many authors as possible under the same roof. There are not many there just now, but they seem to be joining up slowly.

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Lore Sjöberg shares some interesting thoughts about blogging:

Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you’re about as likely to find someone else interested in it.

“Blog” itself is short for “weblog,” which is short for “we blog because we weren’t very popular in high school and we’re trying to gain respect and admiration without actually having to be around people.”

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We caught Billy Jenkins and Songs of Praise, his six piece band, at The Shed, Hovingham, North Yorkshire. There are other gigs scheduled at different locations, so if it comes your way don’t miss it.

Billy Jenkins sings and shouts and jumps around, lies on the floor and stands on tables and plays guitar, supported by an incredible cast of musicians. You’ll never be able to listen to Wonderful World or Everybody’s Talkin’ again without thinking of Billy. Frenetic, avant-garde, jazz and blues like you only dreamed it.

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Orhan Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2006. There is an interview with him on the Nobel Site. And an even more revealing first-hand account, by James Marcus, of Pamuk’s Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture.

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General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the British Army, said British troops should get out of Iraq “sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems”.

Gen Dannatt, who became Chief of the General Staff in August, told a newspaper:

“We are in a Muslim country and Muslims’ views of foreigners in their country are quite clear.
“As a foreigner, you can be welcomed by being invited in a country, but we weren’t invited certainly by those in Iraq at the time.
“The military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in.
“Whatever consent we may have had in the first place, may have turned to tolerance and has largely turned to intolerance.”

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