I’VE BEEN ON A TOUR OF MAGAZINE STORES RECENTLY. They’re full of gorgeous, life-affirming publications. They all smelled amazing. The cheapest was $20. The most expensive was $500.
If you’re looking for something written that reflects the world, the alternative is a book, around the same price. Or your phone, where everything is free, and everything is also exhausting.
The solution is to reinvent the penguin. By which I mean Penguin paperbacks, those orange and green-covered books that launched in the 1930s. I grew up in a house full of them, and didn’t think much about them beyond the fact that they looked great.
But they were revolutionary. They cost sixpence, in old English money, in 1935, when everything else was much more expensive. Like all of my favorite things, they democratized beauty and made it accessible to everyone. So we’ve stolen the idea.
Bungalow is going into print. We're keeping it simple. One great story, printed gorgeously on paper made from the algae that used to choke the canals of Venice. The right length for a train journey, or a coffee. The kind of thing you finish feeling restored.
We were going to make them the equivalent of sixpence, but with inflation that's $30, so we settled on $5. The first three will be available next month, on our site and in some excellent venues in New York and London. We’ll send another note when they’re ready.
The next Bungalow series will drop online around the same time. It’s a partnership with one of our favorite publications, and is deeply silly, and totally profound, and likely to upset all the right people.
You’ll get the first part for free, but can read the whole thing by upgrading here.
RAVI SOMAIYA is the founder of Bungalow. You can email him here.