by Lizzy Manthe
It’s hard to build a library when
you’re a renter. Shelf space can be scarce, especially if you have roommates.
And if you move often, lugging cardboard boxes full of paperbacks gets old
quick.
ABODO exists to help renters find their next
apartment. But we’re big readers, as well. That’s why we’ve made this handy
list of apartment-related books for the renter in all of us. So whether you’re
looking to fill a small, manageable shelf, or you’re adding more books to your
overloaded boxes, here are five recommendations from the ABODO bookshelf (which
is not, unfortunately, built-in).
The Apartment,
by Greg Baxter
Greg Baxter’s acclaimed 2012 novel
takes place over the span of a single day, as an unnamed man searches for an
apartment in an anonymous European city. The peregrinations of the day — from
hotel to street, street to train, apartment to apartment — provide scaffolding
for fascinating digressions into art, music, and history, both widescale
(America’s presence in Iraq) and immediate (the man’s own past).
Life: A User’s
Manual, by George Perec
At least one member of the ABODO
team tried to read this novel in high school and was disappointed to find out
it was not, in fact, instructions on how to live. He should have stuck with it:
George Perec’s magnum opus is an engrossing (and occasionally infuriating)
portrait of urban life, told through the inhabitants of one fictitious Paris
apartment building. For over 600 pages, Perec tells the story of 11 rue Simon-Crubellier, one chapter per
room. The cast of characters is wide, the sweep of time vast, and the sense of
narrative play — Perec was a member of the French literary group OULIPO, which
imposed various constraints to compose their literary work — infectious.
The Poetics of
Space, by Gaston Bachelard
Keeping it French: Philosopher
Gaston Bachelard’s eccentric meditation on the concept of interior space —
home, room, closet, etc. — examines architecture as a shared human environment.
Don’t expect a traditional history of architectural form, or an explanation of
Corinthian versus Doric. Instead, Bachelard explores the ways we treat the
spaces around us — and how they retain traces of our familial and emotional
lives. It might sound airy or abstract or… difficult, but the writing is
consistently witty and accessible, even if you never took Phenomenology 101.
You’ll never look at a dresser drawer the same way again.
Billy Baldwin
Decorates, by Billy
Baldwin
No, not that Baldwin. Billy Baldwin was an interior designer whose work
from the 1930s to ‘70s helped free American interiors from 19th century
fussiness. He famously designed apartments for Cole Porter, Paul Mellon, Diana
Vreeland, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and his aesthetic — eclectic,
art-centric, and personable — has become a hallmark of American decorating.
It’s also a much-needed antidote to bland Life-Changing
Magic of Tidying-induced minimalism. (Seriously, how many more blank white
walls, blond wood, Edison bulbs, and succulents do we need?). Baldwin’s taste
was eccentric, and at heart he believed that a room should reflect the
personality of its owner. In addition to charmingly dated photos of his
interiors, Billy Baldwin Decorates
includes advice about how to develop your own decorating eye, in bite-sized
chapters like “What to Make of a Wall” and “Avoiding the Unhappy Medium.”
Although some of his advice might prove outside of your price range — one of
the photographs in his book is of a couch upholstered in the same pattern as
the original Matisse hanging above it — that’s part of the fun.
Evicted:
Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond
Matthew Desmond’s analysis of
eviction in low-income communities is heartbreaking, insightful, and incisive.
In a country where more people than ever before are spending over half their
income on rent, once-rare evictions are now a depressingly common occurrence.
Desmond’s book is the product of years of fieldwork and follows eight Milwaukee
families and the landlords who evict — or threaten to evict — them from their
homes. It’s a bracing, impeccably researched snapshot of failed urban policy,
and a moving portrait of the men, women, and children caught up in it.
2 comments:
When I lived in my apartment, I had a room just for my books!
p.s. I forgot to mention that I slept on a pull-out sofa in order for my books to have their own room (LOL). Thanks for the post!
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