One of the bookarmy members has posted a great link to the Five Dials online magazine, in our Coffee House forum, and I thought I'd post it here so all could enjoy it.

I particularly enjoyed the article about W.G. Sebald in issue number 5.

If you don't know Sebald's writing, you are missing a real treat - Austerlitz is a must, must read.

The site is alive! It is brimming with activity and after countless months of hard work, here at bookarmy HQ, we are happy to see so many people chatting and getting involved. Not least, the bookarmy authors who are joining the site and furiously adding books to reading lists.

Amongst the authors who have signed up this week: author of The Saga of Darren Shan, Darren Shan, Stephen Hunt, author of The Court of Air and The Rise of the Iron Moon, and international bestselling author of The Alchemist and Veronika Decides to Die, Paulo Coelho.

I can report that officially (well according to his bookarmy profile) Darren Shan has read 383 books, earning himself the status of Librarian. He also has quite a curious profile picture – take a look, or see if you can catch any of the bookarmy authors in the bookarmy author’s forum.

hello and lovely to have you with us. The Beta site is open (hurray).

bookarmy is more than a social site for books. We want to be able to tell everybody that visits what (and who) they should read next. We need your help to make this possible - review, rate and recommend books and authors and we'll bribe/reward you as much as we can.

As you can see - we have a killer African holiday as a prize up for grabs this month (as well as hundreds of books) so get reviewing....

If you have taken me up on the invitation I posted on Friday, calling all book lovers to have a look at bookarmy, you will have noticed that you can't access the site because it’s still in private beta. This is because unfortunately we have had to postpone our public beta until next week – sorry, but it’ll be worth the wait, we promise!