Nonfiction: Unruly Places, Alastair Bonnett

Unruly Places: lost spaces, secret cities, and other inscrutable geographies
Alastair Bonnett
ISBN: 9780544101579
Finished Sept 4, 2014.

This book wasn't exactly what I was expecting.  Based on the blurb and the cover, it seemed to promise more of an urban exploration sort of vibe, very down to earth, lots of pictures of abandoned buildings and secretly trespassing into areas forgotten by most.  The sort of story where parkour as a celebration of space is treated non-ironically.

Instead, we have this odd little tome of a book, full of scholarly meanderings and callbacks to ancient theories of philosophy and college flirtations with the benefits of anarchy, and wild geographic rambles from the garbage vortex (not exactly what I would think of as a "place" in sense that the cover promised) to political enclaves to cruiseships to the rise and fall of Sealand, to the "marginal spaces" that children claim for their own imaginative play.

So, it wasn't what I expected, but it was an interesting read.  I wasn't (perhaps because I wasn't expecting it) really fond of the overly pedantic professorial tone - I felt I was being talked down to a bit, or like listening to that one relative who goes on forever about the deep and meaningful concepts that he learned in school and life.

On the other hand, I was introduced to a variety of places that I would not ever have otherwise known about, and while some were not very historically or universally interesting (Did the highway median really deserve a place in the book?  And the "dogging" site?  Was that necessary?) there were lots of places where a urban explorer or a parkour maniac would never think to visit and talk about.

So, overall verdict: a bit ponderous (especially given the smallish size and lots of page breaks) but an interesting travelogue to the strange and overlooked places of the world, with a hefty side order of philosophy and thoughts on human nature and preferences.