The Streets Recommend: A Florentine Music Discovery & 'The Power Broker'

One of the best indirect book recommendations I’ve ever gotten was from a Dropbox of Luar party pics. (Someone was reading The Postman… at a Luar party.) In that spirit of professional people-watching, we’re putting together a recurring list of timely, mostly IRL observations — from the ShelfMAG team in New York City and our international colleagues — of the books, music, films, and more we’re noticing in the world around us. Who knows? Maybe they’ll end up on your Shelf.

Major motion detected on the MTA. Shelf’s CTO Apurva Chitnis saw someone “non-performatively reading” The Death and Life of Great American Cities on the Manhattan-bound L, adding that they were “completely engrossed,” which might indicate a deeper-than-Daunt-tote-level interest in urban planning. On a similarly intellectual note, I clocked a guy on the G not-so-non-performatively glancing at The Dream and the Underworld. The autumnal romance It’s Different This Time, via ShelfMAG EIC Zainab Jaffa and the E, rounds out this week’s trainspotting.

In music, this reporter recently visited Casa Profumoir in Florence, where the very cool publicist-slash-performance-artist-slash-booker said she discovered the spooky, synth-y Lazy Lazarus at a local festival. 

Troubling intel about The Power Broker: Product manager Ashley Chen said a number of her friends have started displaying the great honking tome in their homes — but not as barbell substitutes or doorstops. This is especially strange because, as Chen said, “I know they definitely do not read.”