— Presque vu VII

We want to have 20,000 books within the next five years, said Army Lt. John Brown, referring to the library facility for prisoners illegally detained at Guantanamo Bay.

Much as I love books, it would be nice to think that the whole complex in Guantanamo Bay will have been dismantled before the projected time-period has elapsed.

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Dick Jones’ Patteran Pages take the ’sixties and love and peace to task in his blog entry on the production and broadcasting of vapid and formulaic poetry:

If, for the sake of some sort of symbolic clarity, one wants to identify a moment in cultural history after which the currency of those words was forever devalued it would be for me the release in 1970 of John Lennon’s second solo album, Imagine.

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On No Rules. Just Write, Brenda Coulter draws our attention to Google’s Literacy Project, and warns: Don’t be fooled.

Although the project is a partnership with UNESCO and LitCam (Frankfurt Book Fair Literacy Campaign), and advertised as “a resource for teachers, literacy organisations and anyone interested in reading and education,” it is no more than a promotional site for Google services.

Coulter says: The Literacy Project has a noble-sounding name, but it’s not about promoting literacy, it’s about promoting Google. I wonder how much UNESCO and LitCam were paid for the use of their names.

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David Montgomery has posted a list of the ten greatest detective novels on his site. They look like this:

Lawrence Block - When the Sacred Ginmill Closes
Raymond Chandler - The Long Goodbye
Michael Connelly - The Black Echo
Robert Crais - L.A. Requiem
James Crumley - The Last Good Kiss
Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon
John D. MacDonald — The Dreadful Lemon Sky
Walter Mosley - Devil in a Blue Dress
Robert B. Parker - Looking for Rachel Wallace
Rex Stout - The League of Frightened Men

All men. All Americans. Oh, dear. List culture seems to rule the roost at the moment. One can only hope it will go away soon.

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