Before restarting the blog it seems worth posting about a site that probably will interest anybody who comes here.
There's no shortage of sites recommending books or ones with various topical lists. What makes Five Books special is that there are long, substantial interviews about the lists and even more surprisingly interviews conducted by people who actually have read the books and (usually) understand the subjects. It makes for fascinating reading, even on topics that you might not otherwise care about and don't plan to read the books. (That would be neuroscience for me.) There are a few duds but mostly well worth while.
As a bonus they've just added a section of user-submitted lists which I honestly expected to be a disaster (you've seen a website comments section right?). However it turns out to present some welcome expansion in subjects - Senegal, Islam, US Occultism, Blake Scholarship, travel books about India, Swiss fiction, Habsburg Empire and so on. There are no interviews for these, just short blurbs.
Some lists/interviews of particular interest:
Peter Brown on Late Antiquity
Sarah Bakewell on Existentialism
Alex Ross on Writing About Music
Marina Warner on Fairy Tales
Mary Beard on Ancient History in Modern Life
Andrei Codrescu on Fantasical Tales
Greil Marcus on Rock Music
Enrique Vila-Matas on Books that Shaped Him
Robert Irwin on Classics of Arabic Literature
Andrew Sarris on Film Criticism
Stanley Wells on Shakespeare's Plays
Hermione Lee on Virginia Woolf
Lynn Hunt on the French Revolution
Angela Hobbs on the Presocratics
