FiveBooks Newsletter 131 (split announcement)
Five Books Newsletter
Five Books News
Dear Five Books subscriber,
Thank you for following us so loyally these past few years. I am writing to let you know that, starting in the spring, our book recommendations and interviews will once again be available through a separate website, www.fivebooks.com (http://www.fivebooks.com) . We will remain closely affiliated with The Browser, but the Five Books interviews and archive will be separated out to the new site.
Our main reason for doing this is that over the years, while I have much enjoyed conducting interviews and reading what interviewees had to say, when I actually wanted to quickly find a book to read it was difficult within our combined site. For a long time I have wanted to make the site more like a bookshop, where you can pick up one or two random books that have been put on display, or go straight to your favourite section and easily get an overview of all the interesting books on offer. We are also working on the technology to extend your buying options, so you can support your local bookshop (http://www.indiebound.org/indie-store-finder) rather than just Amazon, as before.
The interviews themselves will continue broadly as before, with a focus on getting leading people in a field to not only recommend their favourite books, but also explain why those books are important. The result often goes well beyond just recommending books, and it is rare that I read an interview without learning something I didn't know before, occasionally something quite profound. In future, we are going to focus particularly on developing individual sections -- so that if you are very interested in, say, gardening or neuroscience, you can go straight to that section and find your favourite gardeners or neuroscientists there, recommending the very best and most readable books in the field. To that end, please do feel free to email us at any time with recommendations of people you'd like to see interviewed. They may not say yes, but we can but ask.
While we build the new site, our interview archive will still be available at The Browser (www.thebrowser.com (http://www.thebrowser.com) ). I will keep you briefed of developments via this newsletter and we'll also post updates on a new Facebook page we're creating, Five Books. But you can also check our progress directly by going to www.fivebooks.com (http://www.fivebooks.com) . For now, it will still route you back to the The Browser, but we intend to launch a barebones test site in the next few weeks, so you can see how we're getting on. Feedback and advice will, as ever, be much appreciated.
With best wishes for the New Year,
Sophie Roell
Editor, Five Books