I am almost finished reading Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, edited by Sari Botton, and I love it! I would love to read more books about living in New York City, preferably non-fiction. Does anyone have any suggestions?
by genxreader
5 Comments
Start with Gotham by Mike Wallace.
The Works if you want a technical book.
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann or Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle trilogy for fiction.
Joseph Mitchell if you want short stories.
Thomas Campanella if you want something on Brooklyn.
Ian Frazier recently wrote a great book on the Bronx.
Patrick Radden Keefe’s The Snakehead gives a different perspective of the city.
“here is new york” by e.b. white. it’s the best thing i’ve ever read about that city and i used to read it regularly when i lived there. it’s about the experience of the city: living there, visiting there, the way the passage of time impacts your perceptions of it. can’t recommend it highly enough.
Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Luc(y) Sante is a great catalog of the life and times of some of the more marginalized communities in the City’s history
Last Exit to Brooklyn
It’s fiction (and weird!), but Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy is excellent.