The Lonely City: adventures in the art of being alone by Olivia LaingFrom NPR: "When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her 30s, she found herself, unexpectedly, very lonely: "You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people," she writes. Her meditation on loneliness and the artists who have inhabited it (Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz and others) is a stunning marriage of empathy and intellect. The chapter on the deep loneliness of the AIDS crisis brought me to tears on the underground."