Issue No.
1
May 2007
|
|
|
Literary porn
Why we’re secretly titillated by misery memoirs
by Frank Furedi
|
|
|
| Welcome to the spiked review of books |
 Tim Black
First there were the Culture Wars; now we have the Book Review Wars. In the US, authors are ripping into newspapers for their ‘industry-wide scaling back of book reviews’. Books sections were once a place where arguments were had and thought experiments conducted. Where the news pages told us what was going on in the world, and the opinion pages explained why, the books section provided an arena for writers to take the pulse of the zeitgeist and to launch salvos in the battle of ideas. It is in this spirit that spiked launches its new monthly review of books, a space where no books will be burnt though the debate will get heated. Switch off the Oprah Book Club, dry your tears over your paper’s shrinking books section, and welcome to the must-read for readers everywhere. |
|
