NYC

In my living room, I have a New York shelf. It is home to books and TV series taking place in NYC, as well as a framed black & white photo of a lovely corner of Central Park and a paper diorama my friend Jax brought me when she visited last May.

I have been wanting to go back to New York ever since I left. I vowed to return within a year, but our Spain vacation cut right  into the time I had scheduled for my trip, and at the thought of walking aimlessly through Barcelona and exploring the Costa Blanca… I was swayed.

Long  story short, I haven’t been back since the summer of 2009 (much to the dismay of my friends). And whereas I no longer have that “someone is ripping out my heart” feeling when I think of New York, I do miss it. And I miss my friends. But it seems to be virtually impossible for me to get away for a week to travel to the other side of the globe sans famille, so… I just need to suck it up.

It was under a slightly bored-with-a-hint-of-sullen mood that I looked up New York on the Amazon.com website. We are all quick to call Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter etc “time suckers”, but if we were to track down the original time sucker, that title would proudly be held by Amazon. You go on to order a specific book, and then you find yourself clicking on similar books, and looking at all of them, and then you look at lists, and then you add stuff to your wishlist… and sometimes you emerge an hour or two later with a foggy memory of a book you wanted to check out.

Which is exactly what happened when I started looking for books about New York – do you know how many awesome books there are about the place?

I don’t know if it’s settling or if it’s stubbornly getting ready for the trip I am determined will eventually happen (and by eventually I mean before I am old and grey and all my friends have moved away, thank you very much), but I am almost ready to drop my current novel for any one of these volumes:

New York Diaries is a collection of diary entries from many different writers, artists and thinkers (some famous, some not), starting on January 1 and traveling day by day through the year, but spanning 400 years – from the early 1600s to the present. Some were New York natives, some visitors; they came from different backgrounds and different walks of life, but they all had one thing in common: they spent at least some time in New York and they chronicled their views of the city in their journals.

“Today I arrived by train in New York City, which I’d never seen before, walked through the grandeur of Grand Central Terminal, stepped outside, got my first look at the city and instantly fell in love with it. Silently, inside myself, I yelled: I should have been born here!”—Edward Robb Ellis, May 22, 1947

“My experience is that a man cannot go anywhere in New York in an hour. The distances are too great—you must have another day to it. If you have got six things to do, you have got to take six days to do them in.”—Mark Twain, February 2, 1867

I sure would like to see what all these people thought of New York, and what it was like at their time. Kind of like talking to your mother in law and old friends about what your husband or boyfriend was like as a child and as a teen – you weren’t there, but when you love someone that much it’s kind of fun to have someone else fill the blanks a little

(If you like the concept but would prefer something more recent, say from the 1930s to the present, check out My First New York: Early Adventures in the Big City (As Remembered by Actors, Artists, Athletes, Chefs, Comedians, Filmmakers, Mayors, Models, Moguls, Porn Stars, Rockers, Writers, and Others)

 

You can’t think of New York without thinking of its architecture. Famous for its art deco buildings and details, the city is actually home to many buildings of various and disparate styles, and I’m sure knowing more about their history and development would give any visitor (and many locals) new appreciation for structures that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Which is why I can think of nothing better than exploring the city with new eyes, after reading The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City’s History, or maybe New York: A Historical Atlas of Architecture. I love being able to look at things differently and discovering new details about a place I was already familiar with – it’s like finding a treasure buried in your own backyard.

 

The beautiful cover alone makes this book a shoo-in for my New York shelf, or more likely for my coffee table, since the great photos and interesting material make this a great conversation piece and something even my daughter will likely want to browse again and again.The story of New York from the mid-19th century to the present day is told rough  photographs, photo-portraits, maps, aerial views, and hundreds of quotations and references from books, movies, and songs.

As someone who is obsessed enough to have a New York shelf, the idea of a book containing quotes from all sorts of different sources, including music, is simply perfection.

 

What do you think? Would you read these books? Or any other books about a favorite city or location of yours? Or do you prefer traditional guide books for travel and novels while home on the couch?

 

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