Amazon has announced that it plans to sell ad space on the Kindle welcome screen. This makes me so insensibly angry I'd punch my Kindle if I hadn't left it at home.

In 2012, the notion that Americans can quibble with an increasingly corporatized landscape feels hopelessly recherche. George Saunders hasn't even published anything in half a decade! In the age of Occupy, it seems both quaint and indulgent for those who can afford a Kindle to worry about a screen saver.

London-based Hamilton Richardson is the most undeservedly overlooked voice in the field of literary criticism. Though his work is spare -- only seven reviews to date -- his reach limited to customer reviews on Amazon UK, and his scope narrowed to the Mr. Men series by Roger Hargreaves, few critics working today could hope to match the precision of his prose, the scope of his knowledge, or the acuity of his understanding.