John Baker’s Blog

June

by Shi Tao
My whole life
Will never get past “June”
June, when my heart died
When my poetry died
When my lover
Died in romance’s pool of blood
June, the scorching sun burns open my skin
Revealing the true nature of my wound
June, the fish swims out of the blood-red sea
Toward another place to hibernate
June, the earth shifts, the rivers fall silent
Piled [...]

Anne Applebaum at The Washington Post takes a critical look at some Olympic fallacies:
“The Olympics are a force for good.” Not always! The 1936 Olympics, held in Nazi Germany, were an astonishing propaganda coup for Hitler. It’s true that the star performance of Jesse Owens, the black American track-and-field great, did shoot some holes in [...]

The Age reports on Man Booker winner, Anne Enright’s remarks before leaving for a trip to mainland China. The Irish author was in Hong Kong for the Man International Literary Festival and planned to fly to Shanghai afterwards.
When asked to comment on China’s curbs on the freedom of expression, from banning books to jailing writers, [...]

The Dear Author site has Sandra Schwab’s positive review of a new Cybook e-book reader.
So far I’ve read 1½ books on the Cybook and I have to say it makes for very comfortable reading indeed, I haven’t experienced any sort of eyestrain whatsoever: the screen isn’t really white, but more grayish in colour (like a [...]