The Babu is typing this from a cybercafe in Calcutta that also sells namkeens and other things to eat. One mentions this only because the other patrons have clearly taken advantage of the offline menu; the keyboard is lightly oiled and fragrant with yesterday's singara stuffing; the connection runs at the speed of sticky treacle; and the amount of porn someone's been downloading is just amazing. (Speaking of which, he obviously visited Bookslut, which I'd bookmarked from the same terminal yesterday, with high hopes that have been belied. No naked pics of J Crispin and co on that site, unfortunately for the perve!)

What with sticky fingers and all, have no time to do much but round up a few links. Happy Slightly Old New Year and enjoy:

Slate completes a year when critics and criticism made the headlines almost as often as those writer chappies by focusing on the best and the worst of criticism.

The Guardian rounds up the year's literary stories so that the likes of the Babu can get on with eating vast quantities of leftover figgy pudding instead of working for a living.

My worst nightmare just came true, but it happened to someone else. Allow me to savour this moment of Schadenfreude.

Little Black Sambo is back, redrawn to suit our politically correct times. Not everyone's thrilled.

* "It's only after your friend's airplane has crashed into a mountain in North Carolina -- killing her, at 32, along with her mother and her father, who was flying the plane -- that everything she ever said to you, and everything anyone ever said to you about her, takes on the weight and shadow, the damnable significance, of history." Michael Chabon pays tribute to the late Amanda Davis.

The Babu can legitimately take an axe to anyone who uses the word "metrosexual" henceforth. He should probably do the same to anyone who uses the word "henceforth" henceforth, like far too many of his Bengali brethren in Calcutta. They also say "notwithstanding" a lot. Don't ask him why.

Slip of the Tongue Department: "Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, the author of Jana Gana Mana..,"

"But maybe his most influential and hazardous work was done in 2002 when he exclusively reported to "The Spoof" on the Grimsby fish filleters strike, where for six weeks, he joined the picket lines of striking workers reporting on their determination to bankrupt their management." Meet the winner of The Nobel Prize For Spoof Literature.

Literature as Better Homes and Gardens, Angler's Guide and Bar Companion. Iain Sharp puts the classics to work.

* Intelligence literature and the CIA's secret librarian.

For obvious reasons, Kitabkhana loved this defence of babus and babudom.