I think this year's Booker shortlist is perverse. It made me feel nauseous all day when I saw the papers. It's good that there are new writers on it - like MJ Hyland - and I'm willing to believe that Kiran Desai is good, though she has the career advantage of having a Booker-friendly mother... but WHERE is my beloved DAVID MITCHELL???

He is so far above the other contenders it's like some bizarre practical joke. I accept that Black Swan Green is a very different kind of book to his previous shortlisted two (number9dream and Cloud Atlas, which should have won), but this doesn't detract from its immaculately captured vernacular, spacious narrative and pitch-perfect characterisation. It's so much better than anything Sarah Waters has written that I'm beginning to suspect that this year's panel has an agenda.

The Chair of judges, Hermione Lee (who incidentally is soon to be a tutor of mine), is a women's writing authority, whose work on Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen, while impressive, is ultimately scornful of the thump and swagger of the male novelistic voice - Joyce, Dickens, et al. So the cosy, curvy lesbian lit of Waters appeals to her for all too obvious reasons.

Another judge is Simon Armitage (above), populist poet and writer of painfully stalled lad lit. A couple of years ago he published his own 70s nostalgia novel, all about being a boy in provinical England and playing Space Invaders and having a rubbish haircut. Outwardly it overlaps with David Mtchell's book - with the crucial difference that Mitchell is a genius of description, style, comedy and understatement, whereas Armitage is a tosspot. But he probably told himself that David Mitchell ripped off his idea or some such balderdash, and took it out on him.

In other words, the fates have conspired against Mitchell. But not to worry - literary prizes are a pile of meaningless commercial shite anyway.

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern (see link): far and away the most vibrant and aesthetically charming and spine-tinglingly brilliant literary journal in existence. Dave Eggers is a fine writer, but an even better editor, writing encourager, ideasman and all round cool guy (we'll forgive him his addiction to Zadie Smith - just). His pirate / private detective / spy  / time travel / space travel stores in America are an inspired idea and I'm due a visit to the Superhero Supply Company (in Brooklyn) to pick up some Canned Darkness for $10 or so (I'm running out). I've put a link in my (newly discovered and exploited) custom module - anyone who hasn't discovered their site must look! It's a wonderland.