Jason Kottke: “Maybe kottke.org has been intentionally excluded because I’ve been so hard on them in the past. Or maybe it’s just a glitch (or two) in their system. Or maybe it’s an indication of larger problems with their service. Either way, as the company is attempting to offer an authentic picture of the blogosphere, this doesn’t seem like the type of rigor and accuracy that should send reputable media sources like the BBC, Washington Post, NY Times, and the Wall Street Journal scurrying to their door looking for reliable data about blogs.”

BBC: “Tony Blair has announced he will stand down as prime minister on 27 June.”

New York Times: “‘Everyone felt very strongly that we needed a white character or a part-white, part-Indian character to carry a contemporary white audience through this project,’ Daniel Giat, the writer who adapted the book for HBO Films, told a group of television writers earlier this year.”

And I’ll fourth it.

I first encountered the stories of W. Somerset Maugham as an undergraduate in an out-of-print two-volume set that I was extremely lucky to find at an estate sale a few years later. Maugham’s stories were hardly “a creaking reminder of distant colonial days.” Like Graham Greene and Anthony Burgess, Maugham was an expert in depicting British expatriates escaping to tropical isles, attempting to find meaning through run-ins, both carnal and conversational, with these new environs. I’ll have more to say on all this, as well as his Ashenden stories, in a future post when I can find the time.

Post Gazette: “For my first author interview, I picked Sir Stephen Spender, the legendary British poet then in his 80s and perhaps in need of a few American dollars. Why else would he speak at a small women’s college in rural Western Pennsylvania? The moment has stayed with me as one of the most painful episodes of my new life as the book reporter. The great man was wrapped in a gray wool double-breasted suit worn shiny with age. The collar of his white shirt was frayed and yellowed at the edges, and his silk tie had survived decades of tea parties. We stared at each other for what seemed a fortnight until I mumbled some inane question and he mumbled a reply.”