I've been listening to NPR's Fresh Air for 10 years and host Terry Gross never ceases to amaze me in her ability to tease out a fascinating conversation with some of the world's most interesting and provocative writers, politicians, intellectuals, movie and tv stars, directors, stage actors, singers, producers and other people in the arts or cultural worlds.

I am a child of 80s and though I was never a huge fan of Whitney Houston’s music necessarily, I have felt sincerely affected by her death.

What I find amazing about this series is the authentic use of language that is very much set in its time and place. From watching old black and white movies, one can occasionally hear a phrase or word or idiom that's no longer used widely and the writers here must have amassed quite a collection of this kind of language because the show positively drips with it.

We are in high gear around our offices, finalizing everything for the 2012 Programme which is much closer than one might think when we have hundreds of events on the plan!

So it's been awhile since I last wrote anything here. The holidays wore me out! And we're back now after closing up shop for a couple of weeks. I couldn't stand the thought of another "best of 2011" reading/book list, so I decided instead to start 2012 with a list of books I am reading or soon to read. Always better to look forward!

Jonah's Campbell's interesting collection of essays on food has been following me around the last week or so and I've pulled it out of my bag at odd times, just enough time to read one or two essays and consider them carefully.

This new proposal that Amazon has been bandying about has bookstore owners up in arms: basically it works like this: Amazon has created an app by which one can scan any book in a brick and mortar bookstore and get the USB code, then go home and upload that information to get a discount on the book.

At Eighty-three She Lives Alone

Since hawking books is part of my livelihood, we often find ourselves discussing book covers around our offices, which ones work and which don't. Which surprised us and which we think fit perfectly with the spirit of a book.