from Love Over Scotland
Alexander McCall SmithThe Morning After Coffee Bar was different from the mass-produced coffee bars that had mushroomed on every street almost everywhere, a development which presaged the flattening effects of globalisation; the spreading, under a cheerful banner, of a sameness that threatened to weaken and destroy all sense of place.
This is from the third novel in the Scotland Street series and it, perhaps, presents a good example of the critique I cited in the review of those books. However, I also think it is an observation that many of us have already internalized. I know that there is a certain comfort to the familiar, but a spreading and corrosive tedium also. There soon will be no more "exotic" you'll go to Kingali, Kikwit, or Hachinohe and see only Starbucks and MacDonalds out to the farthest horizon. Its a bit sad.