Dear Los Angeles - David Kipen

Dear Los Angeles is such a brilliant concept and it must have taken ages to create! It is a collection of excerpts of writing from all types of people, set out in a super unique way. Each excerpt is focused on the city of LA in some way or another. There is a chapter for each month, and then each day of the month contains excerpts of text from different years and different authors. So, for example, on May 4th, you will find content from 1883 written by Helen Hunt Jackson, and from 1939 written by James Joyce. Some of the excerpts are but a few lines, others longer, and some dates have multiple pieces, others one or two. But every single day of the year is covered.

There is content from people such as Octavia E. Butler, Winston Churchill, Simone De Beauvoir, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg, Zora Neale Hurston, John Lennon, Anaïs Nin, Sylvia Plath, Evelyn Waugh, Aoki Hisa, Don Juan Bautista Bandini, Woodrow Wilson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many, many others.

Each page contains a little bit of LA: history, emotions, people, places, love, anger, family, loneliness, and many other things about the city. It’s lovely to learn about the city through all of these different people’s eyes, how they felt when they arrived, what made them happy, concerned, sad, angry… The heart of the city really beats all through-out this book, and it really gave me a different opinion about the city that I have visited a few times and never really understood.

It is a book that you can read in one go, or peruse at your own pace, pick it up and put it down, and not feel like you are missing anything. I really enjoyed reading it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy!