Reviews

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing

angelenokoch's review

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reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

pecsenye's review against another edition

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Too random stream-of-consciousness glorifying the violent, desolate, dirty lives of white male artists. Blech. 

marahz's review

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4.0

honestly was a really interesting read and definitely not what i expected. author had some really interesting things to say. only reason it’s not 5-stars is because it wasn’t as captivatingly written as i would’ve hoped. there were times where it was easy for my mind to stray which i don’t really think was a mood thing? i think perhaps things were just a little too on the verbose side. otherwise, the subject matter was good and i enjoyed it :)

thunderpizza's review against another edition

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3.0

Una obra que explora la soledad a través de la vida de diversos artistas. Es interesante, algunos capítulos más que otros, pero en ocasiones se hace pesado y lento. No está mal. Eso sí, quizás agrade más al atraído por el arte y la biografía de los artistas, que al que intente comprender o quiera explorar la soledad.

shaeloef's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

natashakoli's review

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing sad tense fast-paced

4.75

skmiles's review

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3.0

A very interesting reflection on how artists and intellectuals have thought about and dealt with being alone. It's not necessarily what I expected, I had thought this would be more of a memoir on loneliness in the city. While there was some of this, it was more heavily academic non-fiction (if accessible and interesting) than memoir.

sarawalker's review

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خیلی لذت بردم از خوندن‌ش و مدام داشتم هایلایت می‌کردم و اسکرین‌شات می‌گرفتم از متن.
واقعاً نیاز داشتم بخونم چنین چیزی رو.
ممنون‌م.

chrisam's review

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informative reflective sad medium-paced

3.5

The biography of several New York (mostly) artists, mostly men while women appear here, important but not the main subjects of their chapters. And mostly gay, although in the case of Henry Darger we don't know. It is really a history of the 'other' pandemic, that's to say, AIDS in the 1980s. I haven't read, for example, Randy Shilts' "The Band Played On" and I feel now that I need to. Here we find real solitude - dying of what Prince called "the big disease with the little name" and socially excluded also. 
And Andy Warhol. As in 'holes' (thank you, David Bowie). The most gregarious of people, always surrounded by people in the strange light of celebrity ... solitary? I'm not sure the author gives us a reason for saying he was alone. She does talk about Valerie Solanas who didn't exactly kill Warhol, but really she did. He might well have lived longer if she hadn't shot him. 

champagne_supernova's review

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informative reflective slow-paced

3.75

Very very slow paced and kind of hard to follow at points jumping between anecdotes about her life and anecdotes about various artists, but it was a very interesting look at cultural effects of loneliness and a lot of intriguing information about new york and many artists, a lot of which I didn’t know.