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Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies
by Alastair Bonnett
Derek Perkins (Narrator), Tantor Audio (Publisher)
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by Alastair Bonnett
Derek Perkins (Narrator), Tantor Audio (Publisher)
...
I was hoping for some interesting out of the way places described and perhaps explained in a rather light hearted style, and that's what I got. Rather scattershot approach, despite grouping these places into general categories .
From Booklist - "Hidden Geographies includes tunnel labyrinths below old cities and oddities like an established community within a Philippine cemetery. We visit Dead Cities like the skyscrapered, yet bizarrely empty, attempts by China and North Korea to proclaim ideological success. Unused spaces enclosed by highways fall within No Man’s Lands. Lost Spaces range from tiny islands that come and go, with shifting conditions, to Leningrad, Russia, which was renamed St. Petersburg. International airspace, a peninsula-consuming Greek monastery, and a Somalian pirate feral city fall under Spaces of Exception. A section on breakaway nations includes a chunk of India within an Indian enclave in Bangladesh. Floating Islands come made of pumice, trash, ice, and modern building materials. The strongest places concern human adaptation. These Ephemeral Places contain a parking lot where work-desperate airport employees, including many pilots, lay over in RVs."
All fascinating, making for an enjoyable and entertaining listening experience until the end.
At the end the author does something astounding and enlightening. He relates all these unusual places to the early desire of every child to carve out a special place just for themselves from the adult world around them. I felt a door open up in my mind, I suddenly saw how vital, truly essential it was for each of us to have our own place, no matter what that is. This is a fun book and a great book and I had to recommend it.
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From Booklist - "Hidden Geographies includes tunnel labyrinths below old cities and oddities like an established community within a Philippine cemetery. We visit Dead Cities like the skyscrapered, yet bizarrely empty, attempts by China and North Korea to proclaim ideological success. Unused spaces enclosed by highways fall within No Man’s Lands. Lost Spaces range from tiny islands that come and go, with shifting conditions, to Leningrad, Russia, which was renamed St. Petersburg. International airspace, a peninsula-consuming Greek monastery, and a Somalian pirate feral city fall under Spaces of Exception. A section on breakaway nations includes a chunk of India within an Indian enclave in Bangladesh. Floating Islands come made of pumice, trash, ice, and modern building materials. The strongest places concern human adaptation. These Ephemeral Places contain a parking lot where work-desperate airport employees, including many pilots, lay over in RVs."
All fascinating, making for an enjoyable and entertaining listening experience until the end.
At the end the author does something astounding and enlightening. He relates all these unusual places to the early desire of every child to carve out a special place just for themselves from the adult world around them. I felt a door open up in my mind, I suddenly saw how vital, truly essential it was for each of us to have our own place, no matter what that is. This is a fun book and a great book and I had to recommend it.
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