In the wake of the Fifty Shades phenomena, Tamara Faith Berger calls for a more radical and liberated literature in her review of the new erotic novel S.E.C.R.E.T in the weekend Post. She has the good grace to leave her own work as a novelist out of the discussion, but that won’t stop me from getting excited about the re-release of her first two books this spring.
Biblio-therapy is taking off in the UK, where doctors may begin prescribing self-help and poetry books for patients in poor mental health.
Winston Churchill wrote poetry, apparently. And why, so many years after George Orwell’s call for clarity and sincerity, are we still so befuddled by the very politics of the English language? The New Inquiry fleshes out a context for Orwell’s most famous essay (though I myself think just as often of “Books v. Cigarettes”).
“But let’s get real: writing is not a 'fucking great' job. It does not attract happy people, nor does it make its unhappy practitioners any less unhappy.”
