I think I am turning into an anarchist, at least of the book world.

I have been growing more and more sure that the traditional book pages of most of the national newspapers are largely irrelevant. The TLS is not because it caters for a different and largely academic readership, but the rest spend yards of column inches reviewing books few people will buy/read and arrogantly ignoring what is going on in the world where the real dedicated and committed readers live.

I was a reviewer of fiction and non-fiction for 40 years but I will not review any more for money and for papers. There are a number of reasons. Firstly I have my blog, of which more in a moment. Secondly, I am tired of people associating me with the politics and general stance of the journal for which I happen to be reviewing. No, because I review sometimes in The Spectator or the Guardian does not mean I am a packaged, fully-paid up member of either. I am independent. My opinions are independent and I do not now want to be paid and therefore beholden to either editors or literary editors.

But I do want to respect the readers of my blog just as I hope I respected those who may have read my reviews in the papers. If I am writing about a new book or an old book for that matter, to recommend it, I hope I am taking as much care in writing the blog as I would have taken with a sub-editor breathing down my neck.

The Bloggers – by which mean the true Bloggers, the independent ones, not the side-kicks of the press – are quietly, slowly but very surely, gaining power. And a lot of people do not like that one bit.

John Sutherland, writing in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday, was pouring scorn on us all – though to be exact, he was pouring more scorn on the often anonymous and usually un-edited, reviewers of books on Amazon.

(I have never reviewed on amazon.)

Sutherland writes,  “There are those who see web-reviewing, whether independent bloggery or commercially hosted, as a ‘power to the reader’ trend – the democratization of something traditionally associated monopolized by literary mandarins. And there are those who see it as a degradation of literary taste.’

The idea that those of us who blog about books and reading might somehow be degrading literary taste is a patronizing and ridiculous one. We are writing about books we love. Why on earth should we not do that in a blog, as anywhere else, and improve literary taste, whatever ‘literary taste’ means ? I may write a long review of a new book in the Spectator ane be paid for it, or the same long review here and do it for nothing, for everyone who wants to read it for nothing. Where is the difference ?

Those of us who belong to this new literary democracy write about all manner of books and cover a far far wider range than the weekly bok pages of the broadsheets and journals. How dare one of these ‘literary mandarins’ feel they are above us and by implication, above book buyers and readers ? Who do they think they are to lord it over us ? They have university degrees in English ? So do I, from King`s College, London. They have written books ? So have I, almost forty of them.

The fact is that the tide has turned and the people have power now. Not that we do it in order to have ‘power’, we do it because we love books and want to recommend a wealth of them to others, so that they may enjoy them and for no other reason. We do it for nothing and for fun and for the book/literature. And to demonstrate that the many – with honourable exceptions – arrogant, lazy, stuck-in-the-mud, cliquey little set of literary editors, and/or ‘mandarins’ are now almost totally irrelevant.

One day, their editors will wake up to the fact and give over their space to Curling, or Dominoes.

One day.