Last week I made a big mistake in reading choice. Just after mentally preparing myself to launch into the New York City mindset, I picked up Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, about as far as a New York State of mind as you can get without holing up in a chilly Jesuit monastery with a volume of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Instead of walking around the vibrant Chelsea district, I found myself meandering around the exurbia area I live in, spotting cardinals and feeding goats and thinking of the ear-crashing songs of tree frogs in the summer.
All very lovely, but not exactly what I was looking for. So now I’d like to ask our readers to send me all and any book recommendations for New York City: fiction and nonfiction; books about the city, glowing and condemning; books by authors from the city; and books by authors who were made by the city, or considered themselves to be so. You can even recommend something badly written, as long as it has something interesting to say about New York and its inhabitants.
I know we’ve got the best, most perceptive and thoughtful readers and travelers on the planet. Tell me what you’ve got. Me and my library card are waiting.
i’ve heard “Up In The Old Hotel” by Joseph Mitchell is a fantastic book… but haven’t had the time to read it…
Good luck!!
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury
Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger
The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
Thanks Caitlin and Laurie! I’ve read all of those except Gangs of New York and Up in the Old Hotel, but some of them not for years and years. Sounds like it’s time to visit some old favorites (I adore Salinger to an absurd extent).
I have to admit, though, for The Devil Wears Prada, I thought the movie far better than the book
This is such an interesting project you’re embarking on! I’m a native NYC’er myself and have many questions about the city and its appeal — although I have to say in the end I do love it dearly.
I have two book suggestions for you. Waterfront, by Phlilip Lopate, in which he circumnavigates Manhattan’s “coasts” on foot and takes all sorts of side journeys into history, literature and urban design. And, for your inner geek, The Works: Anatomy of the City by Kate Ascher, which gets into the city’s infrastructure –like how do they time the traffic signals? This is more of a visual book and it makes for fun browsing.
Looking forward to reading more of your observations!
Oh, Alison, thank you, Those are great suggestions! You can’t possibly go wrong with Phillip Lopate, and I love books of the “How Things Work” variety.
Sounds like you’re one of those natives I need to be talking to–someone who’s thought a lot about her connection to a home whose place in the list of great cities of the world most people take for granted. Have to admit I’m a little nervous about this project, but excited. Although you may have beaten me to it–I love your Huffington Post article where you concluded that New York had “almost the best” of everything! Except coffee. I’m sorry. The East Coast seems physically incapable of understanding coffee
Ha –I think we have some good coffee here, but yeah, there’s better elsewhere!
I can definitely understand your trepidation, as like you, I’m most often casting my writer’s eye on a place that isn’t home.
I rarely write about New York, in fact, that piece on HuffPo was the first time that I’d ever really done it, and the reaction to it surprised me. I thought that I’d get a chorus of passionate NYC defenders. (My husband, also a native NYer, read it first and muttered about me getting us run out of town.) What I got, for the most part, was strong anti-NYC sentiment, and anti NYer sentiment. And although I can analytically see the problems and the drawbacks here, the strong negative feelings that the city provokes does grieve me.
And it intrigues me! So I’ll probably write more about it.
And I am looking forward to seeing more what you think, and certainly feel free to drop a line if you’d like to chat.
I have to admit that I haven’t read the book of The Devil Wears Prada. It was a good movie though. Can’t you watch movies to put you in a New York state of mind, as well as books?
Movies, good. Yes, you’re right, Caitlin. But you might have to drug me to get me to like a Woody Allen movie!
Alison, I’m very interested in that strong anti-NYC response. So many people truly do love New York, either through having grown up there, or having moved there and fallen in love with it. It’s sad that the assumption of its attractiveness to everyone has in fact prompted the opposite reaction. So yes, I definitely think it’s worth writing more about!
Some wonderful suggestions here, a few of which I have added to my Goodreads “to read” list for this year. Since I am moving into Manhattan this month, I’m eager for some titles about Gotham.
I’m having trouble coming up with some NY-themed titles of my own to suggest right now (I guess I have not read that many?!) but I did just finish a brand new novel set in several upper west side ‘hoods of Manhattan. If the Morningside Heights/Manhattan Valley sections of the city interest you, this one might be worth a go: it’s called Ellington Boulevard by Adam Langer.
Thanks for the tip Kelly. I’ll take anything and everything. I’ve had some suggestions from a friend to reread some EB White, too, since he’s often called the quintessential New York writer. But wouldn’t O. Henry fit that description, too?
Antonia, you have to check out Paul Auster’s “City of Glass”, the first novella in his New York Trilogy. It’s a strange and intriguing story that is perfect to think about while wandering the streets of NYC.
If you can, read this short book in a cozy spot downtown (how about La Lanterna on MacDougal?). Then wander until you are lost in the West Village, where the buildings are human-sized (about the height of a 200 year old trees) and the streets haphazard and surprising.
I am also a western US transplant who has lived in NYC for almost a decade. I continually fall deeper in love with this place. I admit that Feb. is the most miserable month to try to give NYC a chance – why not May when everyone shakes free of their winter sadness?
Thank you, Traci! Not only is the book now on my list–so is the image of where I’m going to read it. One of my complaints about New York is the seeming lack of good, cozy places to escape with a book. After Viennese coffeehouses, nothing else really compares. But am I getting the feeling that these places are reserves of insiders’ knowledge?
May is a wonderful for the city. What’s keeping me away right now is not the weather for myself, but the infant son I’ve got to tow along, plus diaper bag. I don’t mind sleet, but he probably does.
So … what first gave you that twinge of “Wow, I love this place” when you moved there? The first time I ever thought of seeing it as ‘home’ was while visiting a friend who lives in the Lower East Side, walking through all those leafy neighborhoods — as you say, the human-sized buildings. And Brooklyn. I think I could like Brooklyn.