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3.18 AVERAGE
3.18 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
slow-paced
A lot of talk (rambling), but didn't really learn that much.
Mildly interesting, though not really my cup of tea, as the British might say. I read Imagined London on my last trip to London, hoping for something of a memoir or personal experience that would grab me and cause me to think differently about the city as I wandered its parks and byways. It was the former, but didn't do much of the latter for me.
I am lover of the city of London. Whenever I have the chance to go there, I feel like at home. I bought this book because I found lovely the idea of a narration through some of the books set in London, and actually it was quite a nice book. I should take some time and write all the books are quoted. I would recommend this book if you love London, as it didn't change much my perspective (or imagination) of the city in my mind. I think it's because I love it too much and visited it so many times that it is quite difficult to "change" the pictures of the places as they are in my mind.
I didn't give more than 3 stars as in the end the book was a bit repetitive, and I guess it could have been developed a bit more to be a bit better ;)
I didn't give more than 3 stars as in the end the book was a bit repetitive, and I guess it could have been developed a bit more to be a bit better ;)
I love books that mention other books and then you want to read them. Now I want to read Dickens, Henry James and other London authors. A short book (about 100 pages) that takes you on a literary tour of London - I feel like I have been on a brief vacation and I haven't left my living room. I love books.
A short quick read about London and all the books Quindlen read that were set in this city. Not a bad book, but only touches the tip of all the material set in this wonderful city.
I will say, Quindlen made me want to go back and explore this wonderful city.
I will say, Quindlen made me want to go back and explore this wonderful city.
Sweet little gem of a book. Anna Quindlen has a fondness for the London she's experienced through much of the classic English lit she's read throughout her life, beginning in her childhood. I share that fondness myself. So this book is a magical mystery tour for readers and lovers of London!
Quindlen visits London (finally as an adult) and revisits much of what she's read while she's there. Heavy on Dickens, Waugh and Trollope, there is plenty here for everyone. I myself love Forster and Austen (both mentioned), and there is a smattering of Shakespeare, Maugham, James (PD and Henry), Eliot(both George and TS), Chaucer, Browning, Woolf...she covers many a haunt..you may not have read them all, but even if you haven't, you will be encouraged to after this travelogue.
Quindlen's ramblings about her most favorite literary city and telling and warm, even when the city is not so friendly itself. She is obviously quite fond of the place, and reading this gave me even more of a hankering to visit there. It also added a few authors and books to my TBR pile. Charming, quirky adn quick, this book also shows off the immense talent of Quindlen as author and journalist, able to really express a feeling in one short sentence. I love her use of unusual and archaic language, which in the writings of others might come off as pretentious or overly scholarly, but in Quindlen's work, seems natural and the vocabulary of a great reader. I truly admire that. Neat little book.
Quindlen visits London (finally as an adult) and revisits much of what she's read while she's there. Heavy on Dickens, Waugh and Trollope, there is plenty here for everyone. I myself love Forster and Austen (both mentioned), and there is a smattering of Shakespeare, Maugham, James (PD and Henry), Eliot(both George and TS), Chaucer, Browning, Woolf...she covers many a haunt..you may not have read them all, but even if you haven't, you will be encouraged to after this travelogue.
Quindlen's ramblings about her most favorite literary city and telling and warm, even when the city is not so friendly itself. She is obviously quite fond of the place, and reading this gave me even more of a hankering to visit there. It also added a few authors and books to my TBR pile. Charming, quirky adn quick, this book also shows off the immense talent of Quindlen as author and journalist, able to really express a feeling in one short sentence. I love her use of unusual and archaic language, which in the writings of others might come off as pretentious or overly scholarly, but in Quindlen's work, seems natural and the vocabulary of a great reader. I truly admire that. Neat little book.
London happens to be the international city I've spent the most time in - probably something like 6 weeks of my life during my 4 visits - and it is definitely one of my favorite places on earth. Quindlen's version of London is highly familiar to me, mostly because she evaluates it based on the most conventional parameters. Her London is the London of Dickens and Sherlock Holmes, of Elizabeth I, bombed out in WWI, the London of Shakespeare's Globe and the British Museum. It's like a Greatest Hits album of London, and like most Greatest Hits albums it's satisfying to a certain extent because it hits some of the greatest things about London. Quindlen is a great writer and I enjoyed her tour through familiar and magical places. But the book didn't teach me much - not just because she stuck to the familiar and common but because she is weirdly worshipful of the city and doesn't offer much in the form of critique or even evaluation. She confines contemporary British lit to the last chapter, where she drops mentions of some of the most famous of England's newer writers like Zadie Smith and Monica Ali, but she seems totally ignorant of the ways in which British literature has flourished in the last 20-30 years. Yes, Dickens was great, for certain definitions of great, but England is STILL a literary powerhouse. It's still a place of great drama even though Shakespeare's been dead 500 years. It may be the most international city in the world, and it has benefitted from these worldly influences. If London really is the "world's greatest fictional city" - and who could really say that, honestly - it remains so because it borrows from all over the world. That's why I love London, anyway - its layers, its many levels. Quindlen, for all her Anglophilia, seems content to stay mostly surface-level, and that level in her world is largely white and middle/upper-class. It's unfortunate, because that's not what London is anymore.
“Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life.
“And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.” — p. 160.
A luminous love letter to literary London.
Someday I’ll visit there and see all of the places that Quindlen loves so much, the places that are also beloved to me, shared in our love of literature.
“And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.” — p. 160.
A luminous love letter to literary London.
Someday I’ll visit there and see all of the places that Quindlen loves so much, the places that are also beloved to me, shared in our love of literature.