John Baker’s Blog

Kirsten Ogden writes about how-to-write-books in The Kenyon Review:
Make an appointment with myself! Sit down to write! Yes! That is what needed to be done! And I did do this, for about a week. Then I overslept one morning, got bored with the journal entries another morning, and somehow my new, regular, organized, appointment-defined writing [...]

In this 1957 film by Ingmar Bergman, a Knight (Max von Sydow with bleached hair) returning from the crusades is shadowed by the figure of Death.
The Seventh Seal has been considered one of the masterpieces of cinema for a long time. But I wondered if I would find it a little embarrassing, its imagery comical, [...]

The Guardian Science Experiment at the Hay Literature Festival put together Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, and Martin Rees.
Dawkins kicked off by reminding us that although we live in a global village, we should not forget the presence of global village idiots. He said that the main question behind the assembly of the panel was to [...]

I read something about blogging yesterday and it said you should never use the word ‘I’ in a blog. What your readers want to hear, apparently, is something about them, not you.
So, I’ll come clean right from the start with this one. You don’t have to read this post if you don’t want. Because it’s [...]