Progress?

If you have requested a free book or two, please be patient. I am working my way through the requests on a first-come, first-served basis. Not everyone will get their first choice, I'm afraid, and I may run out of books altogether -- but in either case I will let you know.

How long can it possibly take to parcel up a few books and send them off? Ha! You would be surprised.

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I have long, long, long since given up expecting English schoolteachers to be able to spell. But one does have this vague, lingering hope that people who work in the book trade might be able to do a bit better. No chance, sadly.

Publishers Lunch offers quite an interesting story about a UK-based wholesaler who, because of various kinks in the exchange rates, and odd contractual quirks about who can sell what where, is able to sell books dirt cheap, more or less anywhere in the world. (And no, I don't think that should be dirt cheaply, thank you, despite various attempts to convince me that it should.)

But suppose we go to the web site of said exciting new wholesaler. What do we find on the front page? We find this:

'Broadwater will provide all book business’s with the ability to source from worldwide stocks, giving huge choice and the quickest delivery times.'

I spent some of the best years of my life teaching English to small boys. I don't know why I bothered. Nobody cares any more.

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I have discovered, more or less by accident, that Vanity Fair is the equivalent of what Esquire used to be fifty years ago, i.e. the home of some of the very best journalism around. On the shelf it looks like just another glossy magazine for women to leaf through under the hairdryer. But it ain't. Read the latest editorial and see.

Also, don't miss Dominick Dunne on the Phil Spector verdict, and O.J.

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Now here's a novelty: a short-story competition with a generous prize and no entry fee. But then it is organised by an eccentric outfit.

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Eric Walker seems to think that only Americans object to taxes. This cannot be true, surely?