![]() ![]() ![]() There are some sections, perhaps six or seven in total, where Waldie succeeds in grasping the spirit of the suburb by relating little stories about his neighbours. I also suspect Waldie of having written Lakewood's wikipedia page, which, like his book, consists almost entirely out of numerical facts. section 221 and Lakewood 'a $250,000,000 planned community' (91) rather than a city. If I were to believe Waldie, California history is indeed 'mostly about building materials', cf. To be honest, I do not want to read about the size of a house, park, monument and/or shopping centre five pages in a row, nor am I particularly interested in the building costs of all those things. However, he devotes large parts of the book to the history of Lakewood's construction, including more numbers than narratives. Waldie prides himself on 'telling stories', the stories of the suburb he lives in. If I understand the idea of this book correctly ‒ an exploration of how the place one lives in shapes one's life ‒ there definitely is something wrong in its execution. Waldie's prose is as unimaginative as the grid of the city he writes about. ![]() Holy or not, I definitely cursed this book to hell. ![]()
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