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A multitude turns out for the funeral procession of Benazir Bhutto, the assassinated Pakistani opposition leader. She was interred at the grave of her father. Onlookers were silent as the plain wood casket holding her body passed through Karachi, the city where she was born.

On the short list for this year's Man Booker Prize for Fiction was a novel by New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones. The brilliant and compelling Mister Pip is set on a remote South Pacific island called Bougainville as civil war breaks out.

Banning Eyre, senior editor of Afropop.org, shines the spotlight on Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean with his picks for the year's best albums. Among his selections: Watina, an effort by singer Andy Palacio to preserve the culture of the Garifuna people of Central America.

In the 1960s, Cathy Wilkerson was a member of the radical group Weatherman. She went underground for 10 years after an accidental explosion blew up a New York townhouse. The author of a new memoir is apologetic for her group's tactics, but not her politics.

Writer Jonathan Hayes was escaping a painfully dull Boxing Day dinner when he was introduced to Dorothy Sayers' The Nine Tailors for the first time. Hayes says Sayers helped nudge the English mystery novel out of the drawing room and into the real world.

Are all blogs just scattered rantings and mundane diaries? Reporter and critic Sarah Boxer trawled the Web for solid examples of blog writing and assembled them in a book, Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web.

WBGO Morning Jazz host Gary Walker shares his favorite jazz recordings of 2007. Among the artists he singles out: Michael Brecker, Abbey Lincoln, Maria Schneider and Ron Carter.

NPR's Lynn Neary talks with book writers — Laura Miller of Salon.com, and blogger Mark Sarvas of The Elegant Variation — about worthy books that got overlooked by the mainstream book-review sections in 2007. Here's a rundown of their recommendations.

About 2 percent of India's population are Christian, but Christmas is seeping into India's culture as a shopping holiday. India is a predominately Hindu country with a large Muslim minority.

Crumpet the Elf, better known as writer David Sedaris, is back for another holiday visit. Sedaris first read from his Santaland Diaries, about his experience working as an elf at Macy's, 15 years ago. That reading helped launch his career as a novelist, playwright and humorist.