Booked

It's been a fantastic holiday week for The BLDGBLOG Book. I was thrilled to see, for instance, that the Wall Street Journal chose the book—amidst only 36 books—for their 2009 "Holiday Book Guide." For good or for bad, The BLDGBLOG Book pops up as one of six titles that the newspaper specifically recommends for "a young artist who enjoys science fiction and high brow fantasy" (!), alongside books by Jonathan Lethem, Margaret Atwood, Jeff VanderMeer, R. Crumb, and Geoff Dyer. So thanks, Wall Street Journal! That was genuinely awesome news.

Check out the rest of their picks here.

However, Planetizen also picked up on the book for their list of the Top 10 Books to read in 2010. "The Planetizen editorial staff based its 2010 edition list on a number of criteria," we read, "including editorial reviews, popularity, Planetizen reader nominations, number of references, sales figures, recommendations from experts and the book's potential impact on the urban planning, development and design professions." Again, it's great company to be in, including David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries, Eric Sanderson's Mannahatta, Green Metropolis by David Owen, Paul Goldberger's Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture, and many more.

Planetizen itself is also an extremely useful and interesting website in its own right, with a strong editorial team, so definitely spend some time clicking around there in the new year.

In any case, it's more than obvious that not everyone thinks the book—or this website—deserves these sorts of appearances, but I'm still excited to see it popping up out there in the world. Go, little book, go!

And, to be honest, whether or not you like the topics I cover here, to see a book about architecture in something like the Wall Street Journal's top 36 picks for the entire year should be good news for anyone who thinks that people don't want to read about the built environment. There is an intense and very widespread interest in architecture out there, and so I'm very happy to see that audience being recognized.