Afternoon roundup …

… In case you wondered:  What it was really like at the Algonquin Round Table - latimes.com.

… 2014 - The Year of the (New) Journalist.

So, mums and dads of wannabe writers, encourage your darlings to sharpen their pens, read newspapers, blog, tweet and watch late-night showings of All The President's Men, The Front Page and Five-Star Final (hunt it down, it's brilliantly nasty). They may not end up changing the world but I'm fairly confident that journalism will soon be more lucrative than it is now. 

Sorry, fella. Journalism's not supposed to be about "changing the world." It's supposed to be about reporting on it.

 …Hmm:  What a dodo might teach us about books.

… Petrona Remembered: Not just another ‘best of 2013′ reading list.

… Poem of the week: Gerard Manley Hopkins translates Horace.

… Mario Vargas Llosa: Anti-Authoritarianism in the Age of the Internet.

If Parker’s testimony is accurate, and I believe it is, China is the country, of the three here profiled, where the digital revolution has produced the biggest changes and seemingly unstoppable momentum. Cuba, for its part, is the one where the changes have been the least significant and most vulnerable to reversal. Russia seems to be flailing in a sea of uncertainty in which anything can happen: a violent lurch towards more liberty or a retreat, no less jarring or traumatic, towards traditional authoritarianism.

… Why Villette is better than Jane Eyre.

… Look! Up in the sky: It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s J. Alfred Prufrock!

(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)