BEIRUT LOS ANGELES BANGKOK CAIRO PARIS LONDON LAGOS NEW YORK TANGIERS MADRID OSLO
on the joys and exigencies of city living
Thursday 27 September 2007
Japanese commuters watch TV on their mobiles.
This photograph by David Sacks/Getty was published in today's Guardian. Commuting in Paris somehow feels less civilized and slightly more interactive..
constantly being updated: old and new favorite books about cities
Alexandria: Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet
Beirut: Samir Kassir's Histoire de Beyrouth
Bombay: Rohinton Mistry's Tales from Firozsha Baag
Cairo: Alaa Al Aswany's The Yacoubian Building
Istanbul: Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul
London: Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty
London: Xiaolu Guo's A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
Los Angeles: Sandra Tsing Loh's Depth Takes a Holiday
Los Angeles: T.C. Boyle's Tortilla Curtain
Marseille: Jean Claude Izzo all books
New York, San Francisco and Beirut: Rabih Alameddine's I the Divine
New York: Frank Conroy's Body & Soul
Tangiers: Mohamed Choukri's Le Pain Nu
Vienna: Robert Musil's the Man without Qualities
"I came home on the last train. Opposite me sat a couple of London Transport maintenance men, one small, fifty, decrepit, the other a severely handsome black of about thirty-five. Heavy canvas bags were tilted against their boots, their overalls open above their vests in the stale heat of the Underground. They were about to start work! I looked a them with a kind of swimming, drunken wonder, amazed at the thought of their inverted lives, of how their occupation depended on our travel, but could only be pursued, I saw it now, when we were not travelling. As we went home and sank into unconsciousness gangs of these men, with lamps and blow-lamps, and long-handled ratchet spanners, moved out along the tunnels...." Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming Pool Library
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