Welcome to Litsy!

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This is a fascinating and varied look at the history of how street addresses came to be, how they create conflict, and how they can impact one's life. The author's research takes us from the US to the UK, from Rome to Kolkata, and to South Africa and beyond. It really opened my eyes to the struggles of those living without an address, the difficulty in giving them one, and to the power residing in a street name and number.

Are there any Littens in North Carolina?

Looks like I‘ll be in the area at the end of the month.
📸 unknown sent to me as a postcard

Fascinating exploration of street addresses and what they reveal about race, wealth, class and power. The author takes you on a journey around the world and throughout history to illuminate the complex and hidden stories behind the names of streets. Way more interesting than you think a book about addresses would be! 🙂

#Nonfiction2022
Prompt: I‘m Adventurous
BINGO x3

This book taught me so much about the importance of a street address. It‘s said somewhere in the book that getting a street address is the easiest way to get out of poverty.

I also loved how she used examples for all over the world including India, Berlin, Japan, Iran and South Africa. And how different cultures view streets differently and how street names can be political.

In another study, Boroditsky and her collaborator, Alice Gaby, gave various subjects a set of pictures that, once placed in the right order, told a story - a man aging, for example, or a banana being eaten - and asked them to put the shuffled cards in order. English speakers arranged the pictures left to right, the same way the subjects read and write in their own language. Hebrew speakers would, on the other hand, organize the pictures in

My 4.5 star reads from Jan-Jun:

Go Tell It to the Mountain - James Baldwin
Notorious RBG - Irin Carmon
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within - Becky Chambers
A Master of Djinn - P. Djèlí Clark
The Address Book - Deirdre Mask
The Black House, The Lewis Man, The Chess Man - Peter May
Dead Land - Sara Paretsky
Deja Dead - Kathy Reichs
Faithless in Death - JD Robb
Murder on Cold Street - Sherry Thomas
The Yield - Tara June Winch

This was an interesting, if somewhat uneven, book about the role that mapping, addresses and street names play in history, public health, citizenship, etc. Lots of interesting factoids.

This was excellent and fascinating! You know that being homeless and not having an address can make it impossible to get on in the modern world but this book digs way beneath that surface. History of how we got street names and numbers; explorations of the many places and people that don‘t have them and why; and the whole way that power is tied up in these seemingly innocuous details is explored here. Tons of citations to explore as well.

And here's my slightly late June #bookspin list. Two entries on it are hangovers from May that I've already started but nowhere near finished either of them and they are both kind of stalled so they can stay on the list and hopefully I'll get them finished this month!

Mask takes the issue of your address - across the globe, across time periods, across cultures and class divides to show just how important to health, economic success and an emotional rooting having an address is. She also examines the reasons you might want to shed the address - in terms of it's connect to state control, to taxation and suppression. A really fascinating read - has made me view lots of very things differently.

Just a few chapters in and this book is fascinating..... Addresses as a way to be seen, to be counted, to have a bank account and to trace disease.

Boring AF. DNF

The longlist looks good!
The Jhalak Prize is for writers of colour and always points me in the direction of something new. 👍🏼

Very interesting. I'm surprised looking back at it that I don't feel like I've come away with many things I didn't know, because while I read it I felt like there was a lot there. Very engagingly written.

This one's proving really interesting and a surprisingly fast read. Should be a good fit for Postcrossing's blog, yay!

Speaking of which, I really need more books that feature mail, postcards, postal services, etc. Fiction or non-fiction, doesn't matter what genre, anything to do with mail is perfect. :D

To complete my trio, here's Hulk being deeply curious about the books I got myself this week. #BunniesofLitsy

Addresses are never a thing that I gave any thought to. This book kind of echoed my experience with a book I read earlier in January - 99% Invisible City - and the reason I say that is because it made me think about not only the importance of addresses, but the relative...fluidity they can have. (continued in comments...)
#24in48 #readathon

This was a fascinating read that delves into the politics & social justice tied into “address identity.“ Addresses are an indicator of influence & this book offers an amazingly rich historical context that helps the reader to better understand the need for social change. I was also intrigued with the concept of how our address helps us create a social identity & thought this meticulouly researched volume helped to clarify these ideas. Great read!

Next up for my nonfiction reading. This is an ARC for a book that went on sale in May—it has languished in my TBR pile long enough. In this popular study the author not only visits cities and neighborhoods all over the world but also draws on examples from history to examine how limiting and, indeed, discriminatory it is not to have an address and, correspondingly, how empowering it is to have one. I‘m anticipating an interesting read.

https://wellreadneck.wordpress.com/2020/11/20/the-address-book-what-street-addre...

A fascinating look at how addresses shape the world. How do people in places from WV to Kolkata struggle living without a street address? Why did Quakers prefer numbered streets? Did you know you can buy an address in NYC? (Be careful that it really IS on Park Ave!) Why is Bobby Sands a popular street name in Iran? What about problematic street names in post-Nazi Germany and post-Apartheid South Africa? Each chapter got more interesting. 4⭐️🎧

“Colonial New York played the handsome jock to nerdy Boston.” 🤣🤣

“This is also a song by Iron Maiden.” Loving this chapter on the history of numbering houses, and in particular Vienna Austria as a way to tax, conscript, and imprison people.

This book is so endlessly fascinating. I‘m 16% in, and I‘ve been totally hooked from chapter one.

I love a micro-history. What an entertaining and educational volume on addresses. From why it‘s important to have a street address, to how roads are named and the political and cultural and implications of addresses. #netgalley #arc

Deirdre Mask‘s The Address Book is a smart and satisfying work of pop history, sociology, and cultural geography. It explores both the past of how addresses were invented and the future ways this may be changing. It is entertaining without sacrificing scholarly rigor. A good read for fans of intelligently quirky, curiously specific histories like those of Mary Roach or Bill Bryson.