Hasta La Ideas

With its smart writing, eclectic taste (from Francis Bacon‘s studio flotsam to the history of ice cream), and pitch-perfect design (led by Constance Kao), Bookforum is one of life’s greatest reading pleasures, and its arrival—five times a year—is greatly anticipated in already book- and periodical-stuffed UnBeige HQ. And so let us be the first to tell you about the publication’s newfangled online home at bookforum.com. For the love of all that is cultural, we encourage you to visit the site, bookmark it, and while you’re at it, subscribe to the print version (a worth-every-penny $16 per year). In addition to pieces published in Bookforums past and present, the new site features daily reviews, literary event listings, and cultural news, the latter in a linktastic blog aptly named “Omnivore.” But our favorite section of the new site is “Syllabi,” in which assorted experts and aficionados offer reading lists on a subject they know well, from walking (Lisa Darms) to Flarf poetry (Franklin Bruno). Sending us to straight to the more obscure corners of Amazon.com was Hannah Frank, who takes on the darker side of Walt Disney with a list of five books that “treat their subject with all the gravity cartoons deserve.”