On a recent flight, I read two articles that had been festering in my to-read list.

I loathe that lazy journalistic trope of using a dictionary definition -- either real or, in the very worst cases , made-up -- to set the tone for a story. So I'm going to embrace my loathing and argue that the Nestle kerfuffle, as documented so very brilliantly at Prezi, represents no more than "a disorderly outburst or tumult, disorder, commotion". Sound, fury, not much substance. The way I see it, it demonstrates two great truths.

This is by way of a whinge, and the solution is at least straightforward. Learn how to do what you want to be able to do, dummy.

For a good long while, I've been feeling seriously underpowered when it comes to being able to do what I want to do online. I can't really date the start of it, I just know that I am no longer able to scratch my itches as once I was. That irks me. I know there are professionals and, even more valuably, amateurs who will scratch itches very similar to mine. But they're not my itches, and I'm not scratching them.

The internet makes it all too easy to go hunting for the information that will make sense of a book or an author, and I am resolved not to do that. At least, not till I have finished this review. From that position of self-imposed ignorance, The Sellout is a brilliantly funny and cutting satire on race in America. Nothing is safe, no-one immune, no taboo out of bounds. Sex, music, drugs, intellectualism, passivity, crime. ...

Speaking of recommendation engines (which I have been, all over the place, at length, and so feel no need to link to) it seems to me that the one at GoodReads.com could do with a little more fine tuning.