Out of Beta

The new Books from Finland website, which replaces the print version of the magazine, is now out of beta, and online. The editors write:

Our idea of what it is to read, and to read literature, has always been – and for many of us remains – bound up with the invention that made the development of western literature possible, the Gutenberg printing press and its successors.

In making this website, we have tried hard to fashion it as a place of repose as well as excitement, a location where the spirit and the imagination, as well as the intellect, can engage with what in the old days was called the printed word.

Apparently the intention is to publish new posts and articles every 7 days or so, which is quite a step up from the frequency that necessarily prevailed under the old quarterly print-based system. New material so far has included a dispatch from a Finnish TV journalist on "learning how to give and receive in the Russian way", though the report seems to focus on a bunch of nouveau-riche St Petersburg nightclubbers. Still, there's plenty of room for discussion there, and the BfF website comments section, though moderated, is open to all comers. There wasn't a comments section in the print-based version of the magazine...