Allison Arieff
Allison Arieff is a writer and editor. Most recently, she was senior editor at City Monitor and was also the founding editor of Dwell magazine and had a regular opinion column in the New York Times for over a decade. Her work on architecture, design, and cities has appeared in numerous publications including California Sunday, the MIT Technology Review, Wired, and City Lab. Allison has co-written several books with her husband, including Airstream: The History of the Land Yacht and Prefab.
Allison was introduced by Jessica Helfand.
If you could recommend 3 books to anyone, what would they be?
What are you reading now?
I read A LOT to the point that it annoys my friends because when I recommend books to them, they always say, "How can you read this much?" There are weeks I read 3 novels (but there are weeks I put down 3 novels because life is too short to finish a book that's not engaging you). I just finished "Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro, Melissa Broder's crazy "Milk Fed," Joy Williams' despondent "Breaking and Entering," and Carmen Machado's "In the Dream House." I'm midway through "The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency" by Tove Ditlevsen. I am very eager to read "Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine" by my old pals Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley (could their timing have been better?!), "The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free" by Paulina Bren and probably 10 others books I'll remember after I hit "send" on this....Oh, and "A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines" which is en route from City Lights Books.
Whose reading list are you most curious about?
"I read a lot of book reviews in places like Bookforum and get all sorts of publisher and bookstore newsletters so I am acquiring new books all the time at a rapid rate. I love to go to Green Apple Books as much as possible to see what they're featuring. Bookstores and libraries are definitely my happy place.”
— Allison Arieff