John Baker’s Blog

Katie Couric for CBS Evening News asked the presidential candidates what book they would bring with them to the White House. I fell asleep reading the answers:

John McCain, Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
Barack Obama, Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin - a biography of Lincoln
Mitt Romney, John Adams by David McCullough
Mick Huckabee, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? by Francis Schafer
John Edwards, The Trial of Socrates by I.F. Stone
Hillary Clinton, The Federalist Papers - the American constitution, etc.
Rudy Guiliani, The Federalist Papers - the American constitution, etc.

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CBS News also reported that Woolworths stores in Britain have stopped selling “Lolita” beds for young girls, after a parents’ organization complained because of the name’s association with Nabakov’s novel about a paedophile.
“There aren’t many people in the company, in the whole world, who know about the ‘Lolita’ book or films,” a Woolworths spokeswoman said.

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Amanda Eyre Ward writes about How Do You Become a Writer? on Cindy Bokma’s site:

I remember going to hear Joyce Carol Oates read when I was in college. I wanted desperately to be a writer, and I hung on her every word. When she mentioned that she wrote by a window, I noted write by a window. When she said she drank tea, I wrote tea. Whenever I met a real writer, I asked them where they wrote, how they wrote, and when. I wanted to know the rules, how to organize my life in order to succeed.

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The TimesOnline reports that a 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia’s religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.

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