Next American City has launched a book club for urbanism nerds. The first entry is fit for the architecture crowd: Alexandra Lange’s Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities.
“Personally, I prefer to read books—fiction or non-fiction—that feature the city as a character,” says the book club’s curator, Washington City Paper copy editor Alex Baca. “The only thing cooler than reading a book that reckons with a city is being able to talk about that book with people who find it just as worthy of conversation.”
(Full disclosure: I am a contributor for the City Paper and know Baca socially.)
Lange’s book sounds like the right place to start: It’s a book about talking about buildings, a meta-criticism adapted from the criticism courses she teaches at New York University. The fact that the book club begins with a discussion about how to discuss something is critical. The first rule of book club is that you must talk about book club: They fall apart without a lot of communication about how to communicate.
Consider joining up over at Next American City here.