Spike Magazine: The Book
An early Christmas present for Spike readers - a 600 page PDF of Spike's best interviews, features and reviews, beautifully laid out and easy to navigate around - completely free to download.
For a long time I've wanted to create an anthology from the hundreds of interviews, features and reviews on SpikeMagazine.com. I looked into the logistics of doing a proper print book several times and it was always a bit of a financial and logistical nightmare. However, thanks to a huge amount of help from my mate Jason Weaver, we have now created the next best thing - a 600 page Spike Magazine PDF featuring 150 of the best articles from SpikeMagazine.com. There's interviews with JG Ballard, Douglas Coupland, William Gibson, Will Self, Jeff Noon and many more, along with features on Maurice Blanchot, E M Cioran, Derek Jarman, Bruce Chatwin, WG Sebald, Thomas Bernhard and a host of others, plus stacks of book reviews. And of course, The Man Whose Penis Made Him Locally Famous.
I say the best articles, that's not really true, it's more a sampler of the 700 plus articles on the site, as it's all good stuff on there. It's perhaps more accurate to call the PDF a sampler.
Either way, I do hope you'll download it and have a read and let me know what you think. Jason and I are considering doing future Spike Specials - PDFs of new content around particular themes or people or...well, whatever we decide. Please sign up for the Spike Newsletter if you're interested in future Spike PDFs - the sign up box is on the Spike PDF Download page.
As the Spike Magazine PDF is a bit of a milestone for me, I wanted to celebrate by doing something else I've wanted to for a long time, which is make a sizable donation to the charity RoomToRead.org which promotes literacy amongst schoolkids in developing countries. Room To Read is very active in South East Asia and definitely worth supporting.
So I thought I would ask Spike Readers if they would like to make a donation to Room To Read and if they do, I'll double it. I can do this up to $1000 US -- so if enough Spike Readers chip in as well, we can raise $2000 US together.
To double your donation, please make your donation direct to Room To Read and forward your payment receipt for your donation to chris@spikemagazine.com and I will match it. I will obviously keep your donation confidential.
You can donate directly to Room To Read online with PayPal
Or make a donation with your credit card through the Room To Read website
