First Reads: The 99% Invisible City

It has been a while has it? College got me very busy and then afterwards I was kind of preoccupied with other personal stuff. But I am back, with doing more book reviews. Hopefully I can also post some non-literature stuff in-between.

Review
I have had a fascination with urban and city design for the past few years. Not exactly a passion, but I would count myself as an advocate of sorts for a better city for all walks of life. I reviewed Walkable City after all. Moreover, I like the idea of secrets, hidden stories, small details, etc. That might have come from my love for unused assets and development builds of video games. The 99% Invisible City hits both of those fascinations. The book is a series of small articles and stories detailing the many aspects of cities we may look past or may not know about. There are a ton of stories in here, which I guess shouldn't be unexpected. The book in ways is a spinoff of the two authors' podcast under a similar name, covering the same subject matter. In addition, the book is lively. Many stories are accompanied with illustrations visualizing the design discussed. Pages, and even full spreads are dedicated to illustrations many forms cities come in. What really everything in is the usage of yellow. Its small, mainly decorative to highlight or underline headings, but it makes a big difference in visual cohesion and attention. It further connects the book's contents to the cover, whereas other books may have a beautiful book cover, but the content is presented in pure grayscale. It also helps break up the monotony of reading. When your writing and even illustrations are grayscale, having this sort of "eye candy" (apologies if I am using this inappropriately) brings the readers out from possibly checking out/not remember sections of the book as they read further in. Combined with an index for readers to search their favorite aspect of city design, and a bibliography as both a sign of good faith and a chance for readers to look further, this book is really cool. This is perhaps the most visual engaging book I have ever read, without making the book about its own visuals particularly.

Overall Recommendation: The more time passes without reading the book, I find myself oddly nostalgic of it. I do not think I can say that for most, if not all of the book I reviewed. It is not self help, nor does desire to make an impact. It is just about the many ways a city is designed, which in its humble goal of inciting intrigue and making a fun read, can be more impactful. I recommend this.

Buy it or Borrow It?: I borrowed this book, but if I had the money, I would buy it. It goes around for $20-$30 regularly, but you can certainly get it for less than $10 in certain stores. I would personally wish for you to buy this book to show that all the effort to visualize and make this book attractive to readers was worth it. That the niche parts of cities, and city design as a whole, is worth talking about.