Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those who Love it, Hate it, Live it, Left it, and Long for it by Craig Taylor

Another book I wanted to read before going to England. I feel like most of my imagination of London is about the city as it was in Regency, Victorian, or WWII times. All very different eras, but all eras in which many books about London are set. I've read a bunch of current books set in London too, but I still imagine London in a long-ago sort of way. This book was a really interesting spectrum of perspectives from all sorts of people doing all sorts of things in London, in the current day (this book was published in 2012 or 2013 or something like that, so it is pretty recent). Taylor basically interviewed a huge collection of people and transcribed their interviews into this book. I loved how varied the types of people are who Taylor interviewed, and I loved how they truly spoke in their own words, without much or any interference from anyone else. I love the oral history format (I always think about Listening is an Act of Love and how powerful it is to hear people's stories from themselves) and I love how Taylor managed to organize this huge, varied group of perspectives into a semblance of a story, a portrait of the city as a whole as it is for the people who live there now (or some who have left, as the subtitle says). I obviously am more sheltered than I thought (because I'm still picturing WWII London, obviously) but I was surprised by how many people were talking about how dangerous London is and all of these unsavory parts of the city. Although I guess people would say that about New York as well, if you talked to the wide range of people like Taylor did. I loved hearing about how so many people love it, and why so many people hate it, and I felt like this really did help prepare me for our upcoming trip there.