Comments on: Which books are most representative of each city?

Question: Which books are most representative of each city?

reenum — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:21:37 -0800

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.

By: zippy

zippy — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:34:13 -0800

Boston
seriously

By: turgid dahlia

turgid dahlia — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:48:17 -0800

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.

By: peacheater

peacheater — Tue, 06 May 2008 23:51:03 -0800

For Bombay (Mumbai) -- Suketu Mehta's Maximum City.

By: Happy Dave

Happy Dave — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:18:53 -0800

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

London, the Biography is a cracker of a book.

By: farishta

farishta — Wed, 07 May 2008 05:54:08 -0800

A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe is a great look into Atlanta, and general Southern, culture.

By: drezdn

drezdn — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:06:46 -0800

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.

By: 1f2frfbf

1f2frfbf — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:25:24 -0800

A Confederacy of Dunces is everything you need to know about New Orleans.

By: misha

misha — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:29:03 -0800

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.

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:36:55 -0800

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.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Wed, 07 May 2008 08:32:16 -0800

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.

By: lunit

lunit — Wed, 07 May 2008 10:00:03 -0800

Providence, RI: The Prince of Providence

By: Roach

Roach — Wed, 07 May 2008 10:05:21 -0800

For Portland, OR, Chuck Pahlaniuk's Fugitives & Refugees offers a unique perspective.

By: doppleradar

doppleradar — Wed, 07 May 2008 10:16:41 -0800

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

By: sondrialiac

sondrialiac — Wed, 07 May 2008 10:48:28 -0800

New York City, although it is a poem and not a book.

By: lalochezia

lalochezia — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:38:08 -0800

For Bombay (Mumbai) I'd go for Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games - actually like a fiction version of Mehta's maximum city.

By: awenner

awenner — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:50:41 -0800

Vancouver - Douglas Coupland's City of Glass

Montreal - Leonard Cohen's The Favorite Game