John Baker’s Blog

Amazon’s reply to criticism of its recent POD announcement, insisting that POD publishers use its own BookSurge publishing service.
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Joan Didion’s memoir about trying to come to terms with her husband’s death became ‘the indispensable handbook to bereavement’. Then her 39-year-old daughter also died. As The Year of Magical Thinking arrives in London, David Hare describes [...]

From: Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
To: The citizens of the United States of America:
In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.
The Queen will resume monarchical duties over all [...]

We were at York University last night to see and hear a reading by Carol Ann Duffy. The hall was, gratifyingly, packed beyond capacity, with many people unable to find a seat and standing at the back.
She read several love poems from Rapture, and others from The World’s Wife. These she wrapped in fragments from [...]

Great Moments In Literature, borrowed from a much fuller list at Richard Hartner’s World. These are, allegedly, actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays:
She grew on him like E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.
The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as [...]