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Which book really captures New York? We’ve asked authors and booksellers to share some of their favourite books about the Big Apple and gathered together the ultimate NYC reading list - from Gatsby to Gossip Girl.
If you’re in the UK or the US, you can get hold of any of the books mentioned from the Under the Cover bookshop.org page, which helps support us and independent bookshops - head to the link in our bio (affiliate) 🙏
And you can find all the interviews with guests from our New York series on our page!
📜 The NYC List:
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Gossip Girl by Cecily Von Ziegesar
The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Goodbye to All That by Joan Didion
The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead
When Brooklyn was Queer by Hugh Ryan
The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
The Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Time to Be Born, Turn, Magic Wheel and The Locusts Have No King by Dawn Powell
🎥 Thank you to Coco Mellors, Leah Bronstein, Caroline Palmer, Meg Wolitzer, Rob Franklin, Emma Straub, Janelle Hales, Adrian Cepeda, Yiyun Li, Zoe Dubno, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Jessica Stockton-Bagnulo, Megan Nolan, Xochitl Gonzalez and Amor Towles for their recommendations
& to The Strand Bookstore, Center for Fiction, Books are Magic, Liz’s Book Bar, The World’s Borough Bookshop, 192 Books, Book Culture, Greenlight Bookstore, McNally Jackson for hosting us! 🧡
Transcript
Yes best set in New York. Best New York book. Best book set in New York. Visit from the good squad, Jennifer Egan. It has the feeling of New York on every single page. Gossip Girl, the whole series. Not very real. Don't know how accurate it is. I didn't go to private school, but I still really love them. The best of everything. The early days of the publishing industry here in New York. Well, you no, the best rank. Actually, a snapshot of a certain moment in New York feels really vivid to me. The Didion essay, Good to All That, it just captures the spirit of being kind of young in New York and a kind of quiet melancholy. Colson Whitehead, the Colossus of New York. It's really skinny. Best about the beauty of living in a place that is always changing. You know, this bookstore used to be a grocery tier, used to be an Argentinian restaurant. When Brooklyn was queer. We're in Brooklyn and it's an amazing look. The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin. It's beautiful. It's about the boroughs. Sometimes you get too much highlight in Queens or too much highlight in the Bronx. This one highlighted all of them perfectly. Edith Walton's The House of Mirth, a devastating novel. The Power Better. My boyfriend is reading it right now, an English worse, and he's annoying me so much, constantly being like, did you know that Robert Moses did that? And I'm like, you gotta calm down. But you rank learn a lot about the history of New York through the power broker. Paul Auster in New York trilogy, it's so hard to make coincidence come alive, but he found a way in that book. Winter's Tale by Rank Halperin. It's an epic. Starts in the nineteenth century in New York. Has a really big sweep, gets under your skin, rank people pin it around like a cult object. I mean, from a nostalgia point of view, probably Bright Lights, Big Stitchy. I'd say On Fire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe is just the best. Like, it's the best class book. If you love New York and you've read Gatsby, then, you know, a place, I think, to turn is Don Powell, one of the great American writers of New York in the thirties and tier. Incredible wit, revered at the time, but has less of a following today than she deserves. If you loved these recommendations, you can buy all of the books mentioned today on our bookshop.org page. Just follow the link in our bio.
