• Michael Moorcock reflects on the various versions of London he's lived in; scroll to the bottom for a bonus hymn of Moorcock-praise from Sam Leith.

• Since I'm sure you've not read nearly enough about Michael Jackson ... he will also be greatly missed by the independent booksellers of Los Angeles (via Dennis Johnson of Mobylives, who has evidence of Jackson browsing his shelves.

• Sad reasons to return to The Magic Mountain.

• Language Log on the vuvuzela, South Africa's gift to future Scrabble players.

• The final sentence of John Self's piece on Housekeeping is very good – to the point where I'm going to force you to go look at it on his site rather than wrench it out of context here.

• Also lovely: the Latin citation for Philip Pullman's Oxford honorary degree. I particularly liked some of the section about Oxford's previous contributions to children's literature: "Oxoniae Alicia terram mirabilium intravit; Oxoniae gens hobbitorum nata est; Oxoniae porta ad Narniam est aperta ..." (If you don't want the pleasure of working it out – and there are enough clues that you wouldn't necessarily need any familiarity with Latin – mouseover the link for a translation. And if long mouseover texts don't work in your browser, click for the full version in both languages.)