[The Booker elicits a massive amount of press coverage in Britain - one paper devoted two entire pages of its news section to analysis of the long list, including a full-page chart with the covers of all the books, descriptions of them and predictions of how they will do in the competition. Literature doesn't get nearly as much attention in the United States, but when I returned from vacation, the Associated Press was running a story about the year in books that presented a very different view from the British one.] I think everyone is still waiting for the book that everyone greets as the big literary book, ... People thought it would be a strong year for fiction, but it hasn't turned out that way. John Sterling