Eclectic Books About Cities

Boldtype, an Internet-based literary magazine, each month reviews a short list of books worth reading. The April, 2005 issue focuses on cities:

"A city is always at its most memorable when you first arrive or finally leave, and there are plenty of homecomings and escapes in this issue: take flight in a spiritual novel about trading cities, experience bumpkin excitement with stunning photos of Asian high-rises, or jump between an array of global centers in the Cities Gallery. If it's the underworld you're after, try the demimondes of Bombay, savor hard-boiled crime stories from Berlin, or meet the rats that share our streets. Go coastal and tumble into area code 212 with a name-dropping poet, or revel in the seamy side of LA...

In Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, for example, "Suketu Mehta returns to his native Bombay with his wife and children after 21 years in the US. There, he mingles with the most vibrant and villainous characters in the super-metropolis' countless demimondes.

While in Everyone's Pretty is a biting send-up of vapid Americana wrapped up in a hilarious novel about five desperate Los Angelenos in search of redemption."

Thanks to Alex Lantsberg