Welcome to Litsy!

I'm going for a long weekend to NYC soon and would like to visit a bookstore. As many times as I have been to NYC, I've only been to the Strand, so I welcome some input. What are your favorite NYC bookstores?

It was a November afternoon in Queens and Jie Zou was looking for a parking spot.
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@ShyBookOwl

Newitz looks at 4 ancient cities, Çatalhöyük, Pompeii, Angkor, and Cahokia, and examines the details of everyday life in these urban centres, instead of the major events that other historians tend to focus on.

I finished this book yesterday to wrap up the #FabulousFebruary readathon. Thank you for hosting @Andrew65!

In Christopher Koch‘s ‘The Boys in the Island‘, Hobart is described as ‘a city, but only just‘.

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@ShyBookOwl
#bookclub #bookclubtonight

Not since Suburban Nation have I read a book that so clearly explains and illustrates how land-use regulations -- some well-intentioned and some the result of greed -- have so drastically shaped our landscape and our lifescapes. A must-read for anyone who has ever complained about about parking.

This engagingly written book explores the ways that parking affects our lives and cities. For example, minimum parking space requirements raise costs and make it harder to build affordable housing, while free curbside parking can increase traffic congestion. There are no easy fixes in our car-centric society, but it is crucial to think about the implications of parking for walkability, traffic flow, climate change and urban planning in general.

I can‘t sleep thanks to this not-Covid-but-still-awful cold my dad brought me back from Europe, so I took advantage of my ereader‘s night-friendly backlighting and finished the Çatalhöyük segment of FOUR LOST CITIES. It‘s a great book so far; detailed enough to give you a good sense of these places and the scholarship surrounding them, but with a more popular than academic tone.

Next up: Pompeii.

When something is for free it‘s usually too good to be true as Moore discovered. Moore was given a “free house” by a group in Detroit that was promoting free houses for writes. She was one of four people given a house. Moore realizes close to 2 years in that the organization is mismanaged & there are several issues that take years to fix. It was an interesting book & I enjoyed her retelling of her experiences. Her writing style was a little hard

What makes a city? Sudjic‘s answer to this question is a fascinating dive into history, architecture, art, literature, and politics. His arguments shine whenever he uses examples from all over the world. (Which is why I had a tough time getting through the "How to Change a City" chapter because it focuses almost exclusively on London.)

Also, lots of highly quotable passages, e.g. when writing about 1960‘s Los Angeles: …