Things I will not be writing about

• Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue, the index that Christopher Beam of Slate yucked up for it, or the reasons for the elite disdain toward her.

• Who really wrote Dreams from My Father, or whether it really is one of the top three books of the decade.

• Yuri Foreman’s super welterweight title, although it’s way cool.

• Whether Dmitri Nabokov was right to publish The Original of Laura, or what John Banville thinks of it.

• Yann Martel’s opinions on Canadian politics.

• The Bad-Sex-in-Fiction Award.

• The war between Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Pinker.

• Gore Vidal’s receiving a nod for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation.

• Tuition hikes at the University of California, or the pampered students’ tantrum over them.

• My impatience for Martin Amis’s new novel The Pregnant Widow to hit the bookstores.