Cities of the Past, Cities of the Future

Cities are where most of humanity’s creative and intellectual ideation, communication, and innovation takes place, so understanding cities is vital to understanding our civilization.
~Maria Popova, "Understanding Urbanity: 7 Must-Read Books About Cities"

We always enjoy a good biography...even if its subject is not a person, but a city! We've put together a list of books about cities around the world, because how urban centers evolve seems very interesting. Each metropolis grew up differently, to meet different needs, with different agendas. To give you an idea of how cities grow, particularly now in the era of green cities, we've included some books about urban planning.

It's also helpful to remember that we live in a city with its own unique history! The City of Albuquerque website is a great resource for finding out how to get around in town, to register your business, learn housing codes, find volunteer opportunities, view the pollen count, get hold of public records, look up city construction projects and city contracts with vendors, find a job, and read essays about the city history during different periods, such as Territorial.

City Histories

Berlin Now: The City After the Wall by Peter Schneider

Paris at the End of the World: The City of Light During the Great War, 1914-1918 by John Baxter

Floodpath: The Deadliest Man-Made Disaster of 20th-Century America and the Making of Modern Los Angeles by Jon Wilkman   

St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America's Hippest Street by Ada Calhoun

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing

Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City by James Gardner

Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation by Anne Sebba

A History of Spirituality in Santa Fe: The City of Holy Faith by Ana Pacheco

The City: A Global History by Joel Kotkin

Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future by Tom Scocca 

Dancing With the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro On the Brink by Juliana Barbassa 

Thrilling Cities by Ian Fleming

 
Genoa, 'La superba': The Rise and Fall of a Merchant Pirate Superpower by Nicholas Walton

The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle by Francisco Goldman

We're Still Here, Ya Bastards: How the People of New Orleans Rebuilt Their City by Roberta Brandes Gratz

Los Angeles Plays Itself [DVD]

City Planning & Urbanization

Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier by Edward L. Glaeser

Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next by John D. Kasarda, Greg Lindsay 

Dream Cities: Seven Urban Ideas That Shape the World by Wade Graham 

Atlas of Cities edited by Paul Knox 

Food and the City: Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution by Jennifer Cockrall-King

A History of Future Cities by Daniel Brook 

On the Grid: A Plot of Land, An Average Neighborhood, and the Systems That Make Our World Work by Scott Huler 

Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture by Justin McGuirk  

Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves From the Automobile by Taras Grescoe 

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt  

Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery  

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond  

Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time by Jeff Speck 

Start-Up City: Inspiring Private & Public Entrepreneurship, Getting Projects Done, and Having Fun by Gabe Klein ; with David Vega-Barachowitz  

Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World by Catherine Tumber 

Where We Want to Live: Reclaiming Infrastructure For a New Generation of Cities by Ryan Gravel 

City by City: Dispatches From the American Metropolis  edited by Keith Gessen and Stephen Squibb 
  

 

Cookbook Design Trends

We salivate over the sizzling sardines and feel the Mediterranean heat on sun-kissed olive groves. The photography in cookery books is so visually enthralling that the smell of sea air is almost palpable in glistening shots of the fisherman’s haul.

When we come to cook, however, the cookbook stays on the coffee table. Instead, we turn to Google, according to the cookery doyenne Prue Leith. Or even order in a takeaway.

“Now the look of the book dictates the sale,” Leith writes in the Radio Times. “In my day you could still buy a good cookbook in paperback with no pictures at all. I doubt if that would sell today. But those books were much used: they lived in the kitchen and got splattered with custard and gravy.

“Today, if we cook, we Google it. New cookbooks lie on the coffee table and we drool over Tuscan landscapes and rustic bread ovens. Before ordering in a pizza.”

 ~Caroline Davies & Nicola Slawson, "Cookbooks' key ingredient now design not recipes, says food writer"

Common wisdom is never to judge a book by its cover, but that's a lot of what we are going to do in this blog post! Do you ever judge a cookbook by its cover? The art director for the New York Times Book Review, Matt Dorfman, says:

When considering the book as a whole, I prefer that the interiors contain answers and the covers ask questions. To the extent that my favorite reading experiences empower me to confront uncomfortable truths and honest answers about people, societies and the greater universe, the covers that lure me into the pages often do so by posing questions that I don’t want to ignore.

However, he is not referencing cookbook covers particularly when he makes this statement. The Globe and Mail's Nathalie Atkinson is more on point for our purposes: "I appreciate good book design but don’t judge reads by their covers, generally – except with recipe books, because how they look is how they cook. And nothing captures the attitude and tone more than the cover."

Besides the covers themselves, there are other design trends at play inside cookbooks. Here's a few we've noted from some of the cookbooks we've found on the library shelves:


1) They eschew dust jackets for hardcovers, but many are bound with fabric, or something that resembles cloth (we could not find a source that confirmed that it was a fabric binding). The metallic lettering on the cover is also very popular.

2) Attractive lettering (sometimes in combination with sketches) is key.

From Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break, The Picnic: Recipes and Inspiration from Basket to Blanket, and What Katie Ate: Recipes and Other Bits and Pieces

3) They're casual. The chef might be at work, and the pictures are rustic. How do you feel about The Paleo Chef's bare feet on the cover of his book (below)?

From The Paleo Chef: Quick, Flavorful Paleo Meals for Eating Well, Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream, and Smoke: New Firewood Cooking

4) The pictures are also vivid and vibrant, with some publishers opting to publish using "4-color [photography], with the photography-to-recipe ratio increased as well," sometimes a 1:1 recipe to photo ratio.

From Olives, Lemons & Za'atar: The Best Middle Eastern Home Cooking, Smoke, and Bought, Borrowed & Stolen: Recipes  & Knives From a Travelling Chef

5) The recipes contain unusual ingredients, or reclaim techniques your grandmother might have used regularly but are less widespread these days. Pickling is very popular.

From Smoke and What Katie Ate

6) They often spell out the directions with pictures.

From What Katie Ate and The Real Food Cookbook: Traditional Dishes for Modern Cooks

7) They share stories and inspiration.

From The Real Food Cookbook and The Homemade Kitchen: Recipes for Cooking With Pleasure

The blog Lottie + Doof finds some cookbook trends gimmicky:

The one place where the book falls short, is in its design. Though it is technically well-executed, it all feels pretty generic. The book looks too much like the type of food blogs that have become ubiquitous in recent years—weathered wood, rusty old spoons, and an over-abundance of crumbs. I think this style started off as a nod toward the authentic—cooking is messy and imperfect! Which was an understandable response to the high-gloss fakery of the food styling that preceded it. But through its over-use it has come to signify the inauthentic, it simply looks like trends—and tired trends, at that.  

Do you enjoy some of these new trends in cookbook design? Have you noticed any trends you particularly like or dislike? Are you more likely to admire a gorgeous cookbook than actually use it? Let us know in the comments!


Links

What Makes for a Brilliant Book Cover? A Master Explains [Wired]

The Original Poofy Cookbook Cover (And Why It's M.I.A.) [Food52]

Cookbook Covers on Pinterest

35 Beautiful Recipe Book Designs [Jayce-O-Yesta]

Trends in Young Adult Fiction: Plots

In January, I posted about this year's cover trends in YA fiction. Today, I want to talk about trends in plots of YA books.

Organ recipients

Last year, Jessi Kirby wrote Things We Know By Heart, a book about a girl who seeks out the recipients of her deceased boyfriend's organ donations. The trend of seeking out organ recipients after a loved one passes away is continuing this year, with Some of the Parts, by Hannah Barnaby, and The Way Back to You, by Michelle Andreani.

Retellings

Retellings are always a trend, but this year, I've noticed a lot of Peter Pan retellings in particular.

Unhooked by Lisa Maxwell
Wendy Darling Volume 2: Seas by Colleen Oakes
Never Ever by Sara Saedi
Everland by Wendy Spinale

Books about sexual violence

I haven't figured out if this is trending again because of the Sexual Violence in YA Fiction series the Teen Librarian Toolbox did, or if it's trending for other reasons. Either way, books that are similar to Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, both in style and subject matter, started trending again last year, and it has continued into this year.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston
The Word for Yes by Claire Needell
Wrecked by Maria Padian
The Way I Used to Be by Amber Smith

Also in this category, reminiscent of Jennifer Brown's Thousand Words is The Best Possible Answer, by E. Katherine Kottaras.

Jinn

Jinn seems to be the new trend for paranormal fiction, as vampires seem to be trending out.

Circle of Jinn by Lori Goldstein

Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury

Mental illness

This is a big one. Part of the diversity people want to see included in YA fiction is mental illness, plus, the Teen Librarian Toolbox has done a series of posts on Mental Health in YA Fiction. What started as a trend last year is continuing this year.

The Problem With Forever by Jennifer L. Armentrout
The First Time She Drowned by Kerry Kletter
When We Collided by Emery Lord
Underwater by Melissa Reichardt
A World Without You by Beth Revis
Jerkbait by Mia Siegert
Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley

Climate change/natural disasters

This is a slightly harder topic to pin down. There are some books coming out that are about actual natural disasters, such as hurricanes. There are also books coming out about water contamination, and I've noticed a few dystopian books coming out where society has changed as a result of climate change (e.g., in one of these books, the snow won't melt, so it's always winter).

Dig Too Deep by Amy Allgeyer
Even if the Sky Falls by Mia Garcia
Learning to Swear in America by Katie Kennedy
Up From the Sea by Leza Lowitz

The Last Boy and Girl in the World by Siobhan Vivian

Time travel

Time travel is one of those topics that sometimes is a trend and sometimes isn't. It's not new to YA, but I've noticed several time travel books coming out this year. I use the term "time travel" loosely--the books in this category can be about characters who constantly travel through time, or they can be about a character who wakes up in a different year than that character would normally live in.

The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry
Once Upon a Kiss by Robin Palmer
Into the Dim by Janet B. Taylor

What trends have you noticed in YA fiction this year? Let us know in the comments!

Young Adult Book Trends: 2016

I've been thinking about what trends we can look forward to seeing this year in young adult fiction, and I thought I'd start by focusing on book covers. I did a similar post last year, and some of the trends I mentioned there are continuing, but I've noticed a few new things, as well.

Continuing trend: handwritten covers

The Art of Not Breathing by Sarah Alexander
Liars and Losers Like Us by Ami Allen-Vath
The Way Back to You by Michelle Andreani
Suffer Love by Ashley Herring Blake
The Distance From A to Z by Natalie Blitt
A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro
The Museum of Heartbreak by Meg Leder
How It Ends by Catherine Lo
Save Me, Kurt Cobain by Jenny Manzer
The Year We Fell Apart by Emily Martin
This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp
The Girl Who Fell by Shannon M. Parker
My Kind of Crazy by Robin Reul
Jerk Bait by Mia Siegert

Continuing trend: girls in dresses

I'm not sure if this trend faded out for a while, but it's back now.

The Great Hunt by Wendy Higgins
Banished by Kimberley Griffiths Little
Kingdom of Ashes by Rhiannon Thomas
The Forbidden Orchid by Sharon B. Waller









New trend: water

Whether it's an ocean, someone falling into water or already submerged underwater, someone near water, or water in a glass bottle, I've noticed a lot of covers feature water in some way.

Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan
Blackhearts by Nicole Castroman
Lessons in Falling by Diana Gallagher
The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig
The First Time She Drowned by Kerry Kletter
Fear the Drowning Deep by Sarah Glenn Marsh
The Mystery of Hollow Places by Rebecca Podos
Underwater by Marisa Reichardt
Summer of Sloane by Erin L. Schneider
Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie
The Crown's Game by Evelyn Skye

New trend: falling

As mentioned at Stacked Books, people falling also seems to be a new trend.

The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle
The Love the Split the World by Emily Henry
Ascending the Boneyard by C.G. Watson

Are there any book cover trends you've noticed for this year? Let me know in the comments!

Trends in young adult fiction in 2015

As I've been adding young adult books to my to-read list, I've been noticing some trends for books being published this year. After doing some research, I thought I'd break down the trends I've been noticing into two groups: themes and covers. These lists are not, by any means, comprehensive, and not all the books on the list have been published yet.

Themes

Suicide: Suicide isn't a new theme to young adult fiction, but it has certainly taken off this year as one of the most noticeable trends.

Playlist for the Dead by Michelle Falkoff
I Was Here by Gayle Forman
The Last Time We Say Goodbye by Cynthia Hand*
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven*
My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga

*Make sure you have a box of tissues by your side when you read these, because they're pretty much guaranteed to make you cry.

Books about the end of the world: I don't mean the end of the world as in some natural disaster is going to destroy the world and mankind. What I mean is I've noticed more books being published about when the world is going to end according to religious leaders. Some of the books focus on parents who have given up everything to follow a religious leader who says the end of the world will happen on a specific date, and then when the world doesn't end, the teens have to try to find their parents, who have mysteriously disappeared. Others focus on the aftermath of what happens to families when parents give up everything to follow a religious leader who says the end of the world will happen on a specific date, and it doesn't.

No Parking at the End Times by Bryan Bliss
Vivian Apple at the End of the World by Katie Coyle

Books that are based on fictional works in other books: This seems to be a newer trend, and I don't know how much of a trend it'll really be. The two books that fall under this category started out as a musical written by a character in one book and as a piece of fanfiction written by a character in a different book.

Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story by David Levithan
Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Book Covers

A lot of what I found for book cover trends are from the blog Stacked Books. Some of the trends I noticed aren't necessarily trends Stacked Books mentioned, but are trends I noticed while looking at the trends they noticed.

Fonts that look like handwriting: This is a trend I noticed last year, and it looks like it has continued into this year.

Positively Beautiful by Wendy Mills
Because You'll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas
The Wrong Side of Right by Jenn Marie Thorne

The above cover images are from Goodreads.

The Summer After You and Me by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski
If You Were Me by Sam Hepburn
Finding Paris by Joy Preble
A Sense of the Infinite by Hilary T. Smith


Light up place signs: So far, there are only two books that have this on the cover, unless you count Finding Paris, which has an outline of a light up place sign.

I'll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios
Kissing in America by Margo Rabb

Illustrated covers: This is another trend that started last year and has continued into this year. I love it; illustrated covers, when done right, can be gorgeous.

Mosquitoland by David Arnold
The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zak by Brian Thatcher
Hold Tight, Don't Let Go by Laura Rose Wagner
The Kidney Hypothetical, or, How to Ruin Your Life in Seven Days by Lisa Yee

The above cover images are from Goodreads.

Conviction by Kelly Loy Gilbert
Love Fortunes and Other Disasters by Kimberly Karalius
The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson

What trends have you noticed in themes or book covers this year?