EVER BOUGHT A BOOK ON THE STRENGTH OF THE REVIEWS ON THE BACK???

If you are like us (and probably one of the many thousands of book lovers across the globe) and have had the misfortune of spending your hard-earned cash on an apparent "best-seller"; you will probably also have experienced the dull thud as you bang your head against the wall, thinking "Why did I listen to the reviews on the back?!" The truth is: reviews found on books are usually self-promoting, PR stunt-type hype and not necessarily a true reflection of the books' quality at all.

It is our aim to tell the truth about books, but don't for one second assume that that is synonymous with us creating a blog to 'diss' authors' work - to the contrary - our intention is to provide an honest appraisal of each and every book we read. If the book is any good - it'll get a good review. If it's awful and a tragedy to the literary world - then it won't. It's that simple.

Saturday 7 May 2011

Getting back into the blogging thing...

So, for those of you who take the time out to come read this blog - I guess you will have noticed that it's been awfully quiet in here for the past few months... Thankfully, it's nothing serious (as you will have noted from our twitter feed, we're still reviewing books, still having cool comps), but we feel a little bad for leaving you hanging, so we thought we share some insider goss and get back in your good books (no pun intended!).


First up, we recently reviewed the compelling (and disturbing) "Pink Hotel" by Anna Stothard.  It's a grim tale 99% of the time, made all the more grim because it's supposed to have a slightly autobiographical slant to it.  We can-not-imagine-being-17-and-alone-in-LA!!!  Read our review.


Apparently, the face of 'evil' is being changed... at least, in psychological/biological/medical terms.  According to Simon Baron-Cohen (and yes, he is related to THE Sasha Baron-Cohen - go figure!), a world-renowned expert, evil doesn't actually exist, what we're calling evil is actually just 'human cruelty' - and would you believe it?  The cause of cruelty is.... Empathy.  Ehhh?  My view exactly.  It seems his editors failed to comprehend that he actually meant that it's the absence of empathy that causes cruelty.  Minor quibble, we know... but still.  Take a look at the enlightening review.


We're excited about reading the latest in the enthralling series by Paul Hoffman, so watch this space (or our twitter feed) for details of our review of "The Last Four Things".


That's all for now folks,

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