Five Books Newsletter 14

Dear Five Books reader,

I am happy to say our new site, www.fivebooks.com (http://fivebooks.com) , is now live. I want to point out one or two things that might be helpful when you're using it. One of the main reasons for changing the old format was to make it easier to find books. With the new site you have the option to "browse by book" so you don't have to go through long interviews to find recommended books. So, for example, say you are interested in philosophy. You can you can straight to this page (http://fivebooks.com/section/book/5683) , to find a list of all our recommended philosophy books. If you click on any of the books, a short quote will appear, explaining why the interviewee liked it.

If you still prefer to browse the philosophy section by reading interviews, you can go to this page (http://fivebooks.com/section/interview/5683) and still "browse by interview" as was possible on the old site. Red buttons allow you to easly switch between the two ways of browsing, and you can also use the dropdown menus on any page to either browse by "interviews" or "books."

A list of all our sections — from Atheism to World History — is available on this page (http://fivebooks.com/subjects) .

Anytime you wish to return to our home page, just click on our beloved manatee. It is, by the way, the work of Roland Chambers, Five Books's first editor. (You can see more of his drawings in this fabulous children's book (http://www.amazon.com/Rooftop-Rocket-Party-Single-Titles/dp/0761318887/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369994331&sr=8-1&keywords=the+rooftop+rocket+party) he wrote.)

Like the old site, our new site was built by our Belarussian tech team, ThinkFabrik (http://www.thinkfabrik.com) , who have worked extremely hard and done a fantastic job. The design is the work of Alexandra Maynard, who not only did a wonderful job on the look and feel of the site, but also did a lot of thinking on its underlying structure. She previously did the beautiful artwork on this (http://www.amazon.com/Leon-Ingredients-Recipes-Allegra-McEvedy/dp/1840915021/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1369977095&sr=8-2-spell&keywords=leon+coohbook) book and continues to create gorgeous websites like this (http://www.tessamaynard.com) and this (http://www.pennardhouse.com) . (Disclosure: Alex is also my sister-in-law).

I'm sure there will be a number of glitches these first weeks, so please bear with us and do email us if you find something incredibly annoying or that could be improved. Positive feedback is, of course, better for morale...

Have a good week,

Sophie
Sophie.roell@fivebooks.com (Sophie.roell@fivebooks.com)