My friend Mark Haskell Smith shared on Facebook today the glorious news about the arrival of a new and comprehensive, old school meets multi-media book review called the Los Angeles Review of Books.

It’s still in the “preview stage,” but what they’re going to offer promises to be amazing, and fill a very large void left as a result of several major newspapers downsizing or eliminating their book reviews.

As a LA Times subscriber of many years, I’ve been very disheartened to see its Book Review go from a stand-alone Sunday section, to just a few pages in its Arts & Books section. A travesty, indeed. And ironic as well, as the LARB site explains: “…twenty times as many titles are published each year than were in 1980, and we have one twentieth of the serious book reviews.” Here’s to hoping that the LARB will inspire a positive change in that mentality.

Edited by Tom Lutz, an author and the Chair of Creative Writing at UC Riverside, LARB will feature in-depth book reviews, author interviews, online book clubs, something called LARB TV, and many other interactive features. Their list of contributors is expansive and impressive, including the aforementioned Mr. Smith, Janet Fitch, Susan Straight, Michael Tolkin and Jonathan Lethem; their topics as varied and intriguing as the fine art of the euphemism, literary tattoos, and literary dispatches from around the world and the microcosm of the world, Southern California.

So if you love books (and I know that you do) and crave a source for intelligent, insightful and passionate discourse on all things books, check out the LARB preview site and keep tabs on its official launch.