John Baker’s Blog

I was musing on the idea of a chilled breeze being an advance payment on autumn when the skies opened and the rain came. I ducked into Swinegate Court and decided to have a coffee in Piglets, read the newspapers for a while, keep dry.
They have wide wooden shelves against the windows and walls, and [...]

This from PEN World Voices: Rushdie, Eco, and Vargas Llosa by Dorothy W. at Metaxu Cafe:
Then Lopate asked a couple questions solicited on index cards from the audience; the first question, asking the writers to describe their writing methods, got only boos from the audience because of its banality, and I was delighted to see [...]

The German film, The Lives of Others has been released as a DVD. Paul Cantor has an extensive review of it in Christianity Today, claiming it to be the best feature film début by a director since Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. My own review is here.
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Do read Alex Witchel’s piece in The New York Times. [...]

In The Fragrant City, where I was born, I’m nothing until I can speak English. This wasn’t the case for my father or his father, or for any of my ancestors going back more than 12,000 years. They were who they were. But for me and my brothers we are what we do.
They are similar, [...]