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So, after the disappointment of City of Falling Angels, I am looking for recommendations for nonfiction about modern cities (ideally) or modern non-urban locations.
I don't mean socio-political analyses, like Mike Davis's City of Quartz (Los Angeles), but more novelistic narrative nonfiction, maybe organized around a central event, like the murder in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, or maybe just an account of living somewhere, like Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun (Tuscany) or William Dalrymple's City of Djinns (New Delhi).
Cities I am particularly interested in reading about are the ones I've visited: Los Angeles, New York City, Santa Cruz, Tokyo, Kyoto, Kanazawa, New Delhi, Bombay (I should probably get Maximum City, right?), Thiruvananthapuram, Pune, Jaipur, Venice, Rome, London, and Madrid.
Amazingly enough, I cannot recall ever having read a book of that sort about Los Angeles, though I'm sure that many, many, many, have been written, and some of them are probably even good. That is, I have read narrative nonfiction set in LA, like Homicide Special, but it's been much more narrowly focused, like on a homicide squad or a courthouse, and hasn't expanded to touch on life in the city in general.
Again, the requirements are narrative rather than analytical, nonfiction rather than fiction, contemporary (or at least partially contemporary-- lots of these involve both the past and present of a city) and preferably with a focus on solid detail, like characters, food, architecture, etc. I want to know what the air smells like in the summer, where cops go to eat lunch, and whether the the roads are paved with asphalt or square black cobblestones the size of a small woman's palm.
Feel free to link to this-- I'd love to get a wide range of responses and recommendations.
ETA bonus question: What nonfiction book do you think is the best, or is widely considered to be the definitive work about Los Angeles? (If you nominate You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again or any other relatively modern Hollywood tell-all, please also include a non-Hollywood-focused nominee.)
Ideally, I'd like to read some books that are focused on neither Hollywood nor gangs.
I don't mean socio-political analyses, like Mike Davis's City of Quartz (Los Angeles), but more novelistic narrative nonfiction, maybe organized around a central event, like the murder in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, or maybe just an account of living somewhere, like Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun (Tuscany) or William Dalrymple's City of Djinns (New Delhi).
Cities I am particularly interested in reading about are the ones I've visited: Los Angeles, New York City, Santa Cruz, Tokyo, Kyoto, Kanazawa, New Delhi, Bombay (I should probably get Maximum City, right?), Thiruvananthapuram, Pune, Jaipur, Venice, Rome, London, and Madrid.
Amazingly enough, I cannot recall ever having read a book of that sort about Los Angeles, though I'm sure that many, many, many, have been written, and some of them are probably even good. That is, I have read narrative nonfiction set in LA, like Homicide Special, but it's been much more narrowly focused, like on a homicide squad or a courthouse, and hasn't expanded to touch on life in the city in general.
Again, the requirements are narrative rather than analytical, nonfiction rather than fiction, contemporary (or at least partially contemporary-- lots of these involve both the past and present of a city) and preferably with a focus on solid detail, like characters, food, architecture, etc. I want to know what the air smells like in the summer, where cops go to eat lunch, and whether the the roads are paved with asphalt or square black cobblestones the size of a small woman's palm.
Feel free to link to this-- I'd love to get a wide range of responses and recommendations.
ETA bonus question: What nonfiction book do you think is the best, or is widely considered to be the definitive work about Los Angeles? (If you nominate You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again or any other relatively modern Hollywood tell-all, please also include a non-Hollywood-focused nominee.)
Ideally, I'd like to read some books that are focused on neither Hollywood nor gangs.
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