Which books are most representative of each city?

May 6, 2008 10:21 PM

What one book will allow others to gain the truest insight into the soul of each city or region

Inspired by this recent Metafilter post and blatantly stealing the idea (and some text) from this AskMe post, I have decided to try and read a book about all of the major cities in the United States and the world. I've seen AskMe's in the past about various cities, such as London and New York.

So: which single book from each city is most revealing of the lifestyle, customs, struggles, and spirit of that nation? I lived in San Francisco a while back, and I would recommend any of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City' books to get a true idea of life in the City.

posted by reenum to writing & language (16 comments total)

Boston
seriously
posted by zippy at 10:34 PM on May 6

For Brisbane (that's in Australia) I'd probably go for the Andrew McGahan trilogy of 'Praise', '1988' and 'Last Drinks'. He's the only modern Australian author I can actually stomach so I can't offer any insight for Melbourne or Sydney.
posted by turgid dahlia at 10:48 PM on May 6

For Bombay (Mumbai) -- Suketu Mehta's Maximum City.
posted by peacheater at 11:51 PM on May 6

Bizarre, this was in my list of future AskMe questions.

London, the Biography is a cracker of a book.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:18 AM on May 7

A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe is a great look into Atlanta, and general Southern, culture.
posted by farishta at 5:54 AM on May 7

I actually had a nomadic co-worker who was obsessed with finding "the" representative book for each city she lived in, but I don't think she ever found a Milwaukee novel.

There's a poetry book, though, that captures the mix of oddity, catholicism, despair, and joy of living here... Milwaukee Does Strange Things to People.
posted by drezdn at 7:06 AM on May 7

A Confederacy of Dunces is everything you need to know about New Orleans.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 7:25 AM on May 7

For Savannah, I like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Any Carl Hiaasen book for Miami, but my favorite is Hiaasen's Skinny Dip.
posted by misha at 7:29 AM on May 7 [1 favorite]

The pre-1985 run of Peanuts more or less pre-indoctrinated me to live in the Twin Cities. Attitudes, concerns, weather, it's all there. The wall that Linus and Charlie Brown lean on all the time looks like the standard design used in older Minneapolis city parks.

I suppose Keillor's the guy for outstate Minnesota, but Charles Schulz really wrote the book on Minneapolis and St. Paul.
posted by COBRA! at 7:36 AM on May 7

For Reykjavík, 101 Reykjavik. I'm currently reading Helen Garner's Monkey Grip, which feels like it's giving me a good feel for Melbourne (I was there about a month ago) but I'd like a Melburnian to back me up on this.
posted by Kattullus at 8:32 AM on May 7

Providence, RI: The Prince of Providence
posted by lunit at 10:00 AM on May 7

For Portland, OR, Chuck Pahlaniuk's Fugitives & Refugees offers a unique perspective.
posted by Roach at 10:05 AM on May 7

Czech Republic:
Novels by Milan Kundera ( The Joke, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)

Prague:
Poetry by Czeslaw Milosz ( Collected Poems)

Venice:
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

Germany:
Rilke ( Selected Poetry)

Scandanavia:
Strindberg ( Six Plays)

Ireland:
Dubliners by James Joyce
posted by doppleradar at 10:16 AM on May 7

New York City, although it is a poem and not a book.
posted by sondrialiac at 10:48 AM on May 7

For Bombay (Mumbai) I'd go for Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games - actually like a fiction version of Mehta's maximum city.
posted by lalochezia at 4:38 PM on May 7

Vancouver - Douglas Coupland's City of Glass

Montreal - Leonard Cohen's The Favorite Game
posted by awenner at 6:50 PM on May 7