The finance, insurance and real estate sectors came second in temperance terms, at 29 units per week. Chief executive of charity the Drinkaware Trust, Chris Sorek, recommended having two alcohol-free days a week and doing regular exercise to reduce the "combat stress" of office life".

Company's 'ATM For Books' Prints On Demand

Story on NPR: "Have you ever had that frustration of walking into a bookstore, looking for a specific book, and being told it's out of print or not in stock? One company wants to put an end to that. In a move some are calling the most significant step in publishing in the last 500 years, a New York company is trying to make books available on demand, printed out locally, rather than centrally as they always have been. On Demand Books has installed a trial machine in a central London bookstore. It's called the Espresso machine, but it has nothing to do with coffee beans. This baby's grinding out books". See additional text and listen to 4 minute audio piece at NPR.

Keats's Afterlife

Professor Christopher Ricks in The New York Review of Books has areview article on Stanley Plumly's "profoundly humane evocation of Keats's life and his immediate afterlife is better than magisterial, for it is masterly. The book is supremely well informed, by means not only of sheer information, but of the larger-the Keatsian-sense of what it is to inform. Even while Plumly knows that there is no substitute for knowledge, he knows that this is because there is no substitute for anything: for, say, conviction, sensibility, intelligence, honesty, curiosity such as does not kill but gives life, and love"

The NYRB also has in its latest issue, a tribute to John Updike by Julian Barnes.

"Hearing of John Updike's death in January of this year, I had two immediate, ordinary reactions. The first was a protest-"But I thought we had him for another ten years"; the second, a feeling of disappointment that Stockholm had never given him the nod. The latter was a wish for him, and for American literature, the former a wish for me, for us, for Updikeans around the world."

Another world record for Agatha Christie

The UK Guardian reports that "Agatha Christie notched up her third world record this week when her Complete Miss Marple was named by Guinness World Records as the book with the thickest spine, coming in at 322mm, or just over 1ft. Christie adds this accolade to her Guinness rankings as bestselling novelist of all time (two billion books in more than 45 languages), and author of the longest-running play, The Mousetrap (now in its 58th year).

Running to 4,032 pages and costing £1,000, the Complete Marple sees the spinster with a mind of steel solving 43 murders, knitting 47 garments and drinking 143 cups of tea over the course of 12 novels and 20 short stories. With the book weighing in at 8.02kg, it was a feat of engineering to produce. Guinness World Records had insisted that it be mass-produced - HarperCollins has printed a limited run of 500 copies - and physically readable to break the record, previously held by a 3,888-page dictionary."

The Hay Literary Festival

The UK Bookseller reviews the Hay Literary Festival, which I attended in the late 1990s - fortunately in a year in which it did not rain.

"The first outing for the Hay Festival 21 years ago was a rather sedate affair with only about 1,300 people turning out for the 35 events. It is, of course, sedate no longer. Attendance last year was about 120,000 and there are 358 adult and 97 children's events in this year's programme. And that doesn't even count the ancillary, impromptu events, such as Ruth Padel's press conference on Monday after she resigned the Oxford University poetry professorship.

As the size of the programme has grown exponentially, so has the selling side. There are 25 stalls at the festival this year, including food and drink concessions, Hay area crafters, a local farmer's fruit and veg stand, charities, and some more left-field operations such as the booth for Christ College Brecon, a Welsh boarding school. But books remain the focus with four booksellers: Pembertons, the festival's official bookselling partner; a Welsh government-backed Literature in Wales concession; overall festival sponsor the Guardian's stall for their imprint Guardian Books; and Oxfam.

Pembertons, the only one of Hay-on-Wye's 39 bookshops that specialises solely in new books, has been the festival's official bookseller for the last 19 years. When I catch up with owner Di Blunt after a crammed Julia Donaldson and Axel Schaffer signing, she says with a laugh, "Sometimes it feels like 900 years."

The first weekend has been "extremely busy" and Blunt expects to shift about 100,000 books over the 11-day festival. The difficulty she says, is getting the numbers right. She adds: "You're always, always nervous, wondering if you ordered the correct amount of books for each signing. And you have to remember how important it is for each author. They may be only one of about 150 signings, but you have to get it right."

It is busy as well over at the Oxfam stall. This is the first year at Hay for the charity, which shifts about 11 million books a year and is Europe's largest second-hand bookseller. Kavitha Singh, who manages an Oxfam shop in Cowbridge, Wales, says, "Books are by far the most successful part of Oxfam's retail arm and it makes sense that we're here." Singh adds the point is not just to sell books and get donations over the course of the festival but to raise awareness.

Of course, having a second-hand bookseller at a book festival does raise some concerns-authors and publishers do not get any revenue from the sales. But this is a Guardian -reading crowd. While talking to Singh, I see a couple of people donate books that they have just purchased from the Pembertons stall. A win-win, I think you might call that."

Odd Book Title

Squid Jigging from Small Boats. By Motosugu Hamabe, et al. Fishing News Books 1989.

Debbie Campbell of the National Library reports it is at various Oz locations.