I'm (seemingly endlessly) fascinated by London - how its defined, its past and its future. I love the city and the suburbs, and I love the Underground. I just spent a weekend going from Ruislip, where I live, to Waterloo, to Crystal Palace and Anerley (where my friend lives), then the next day to Brixton, before going to the South Bank and coming back to my north-west outer London suburb for tea and sleep. My reading on the tube journeys this weekend was The 32 Stops, which is a book published a [...]

I see people moaning about uninspired writing here. Well, this is different from the other books in the series. 'Hard facts' don't easily translate into stories we can identify with, but Dorling at least tries. Thumbs up for that. It's never a bad idea to try to open people's eyes to class differences that always seem to be just around the corner in London.

This was actually a really good read! I got told to read this for help with my A-Level geography coursework and surprisingly enjoyed reading this! I loved how Danny Dorling mixed fiction with actual statistics, making the book more interesting to me.

This is the second of the two books I bought from Penguin's set of twelve celebrating 150 years of London Underground. They're pretty little things. The other one I bought was A History of Captalism According to the Jubilee Line, which I very much enjoyed.The 32 Stops is based around an unusual concept. Dorling takes you on a journey from west to east along the Central Line, but without actually descending underground; instead he character-hops a waking day at half-hourly intervals, giving you a [...]

The Central Line, as its name implies, cuts through the heart of central London, traveling from West Ruislip station in Hillingdon eastward to its terminus at Epping station in Essex. It passes through several key junctions with other lines en route, particularly those at Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road, Holborn, Bank and Stratford stations. It is the longest Underground line, as the journey from West Ruislip to Epping is nearly 55 kilometers (just over 34 miles), and it serves over 260 mill [...]

"At the start of the journey, life expectancy falls by two months a minute", writer Danny Dorling states near to the start of his book, referring to the districts that you will pass through if you are travelling west on London's Central line from its western terminus.This book revolves entirely around demographic and statistical information for areas of London located on the Central Line, talking at length about life expectancy, number of children living in poverty and average exam results. Howe [...]

This is the one in the Penguin Lines / 150th anniversary of the London Underground series that most jumped out at me - Danny Dorling being the social economist fellah who has a great gift for using data to shame the arse off the social-solidarity-free British voter. Plus I saw him speak at a company event once and his speech, uniquely for that setting, included a number of genuinely meaningful thoughts. There's the bones here of something almostwell, literary too (the imagined specimen character [...]

"London's most striking line, the red one, the one that looks like a heartbeat." - Central LineI read the book as a tribute to London tube which has served locals and tourists for 150th years. The book contains fictional elements but they are all based on statistics and data. It's a unique and interesting approach to look at the tube and the social topography along the line.As a tourist, I only managed to see the glamourous side and perhaps the less glamorous side superficially. Yet, the book sh [...]

What statistics on London! The average life expectancy drops with 10 years if you travel for a few minutes. A lot of bankers do live around the Bank subway station. An average income differs huge amounts depending on where you live (surprise, surprise).All in all, this is a very lubricated experiment in mixing factual numbers with fiction, and the outcome is sublime, chocking and very intelligently written about sociology, everyday life, crime, monetary factors, family life and all else that per [...]

I really enjoyed this book, much to my surprise. I don't usually read a lot of non-fiction, and certainly not Geography! But this book gripped me when I casually picked it up from our shelves. Starting at one end of the Central Line, it tells the story of a fictional typical character from that stop, using geographical and statistical information. It is a fascinating story of how school grades fall and rise through the stops, life expectancy and crime rates, and other factors. The story takes pl [...]

Uninspired writing, despite superficially interesting idea of quality of life indicators dipping and rising like a roller-coaster across London's variegated social landscape. Yes, in some parts of London the average life expectancy of local residents dips by a year for every minute of travel along the line, etcbut so what? That doesn't really tell us anything novel about London itself.Primarily useful for the links to quantitative census data fuelling Dorling's ongoing study of changing patterns [...]

As with any decent writings on current social and political issues, this is a great read but pretty grim - invaluable nonetheless. The writing style is ingenious, using short sequential narrative segments to illustrate the issues at hand (poverty and social mobility), and particularly clever is how they all link up to each other not just as stops on a line - give it a read and you'll see what I mean.

Sure, it is a bunch of statistics dressed up as short stories, but that does not make the book any less interesting. The landscape of London may be almost flat, but look at the numbers per ward for average income and life expectancy etc. and it is more like the Alps. The little stories make these numbers less abstract. In that the book has achieved its goal.It also makes me want to visit the city to see these places for myself.

A short piece from Danny Dorling as part of a series for 150 years of the tube. It uses the Central Line as a thread to link some social geography with a short fact packed entry for each station. I felt a little swindled as while I used to live in the area covered by the book I have now drifted out to a section beyond the edge of london and therefore outside of the text. This probably makes me fairly stypical in some ways!

"At the start of the journey life expectancy falls by two months a minute" across the 32 stops in London the Central Line subway makes. This books is Dorling's sociological study of the vast disparities of wealth, health, education, opportunities, and general quality of life encompassed by that short trip, stop by stop.

An interesting dip into a discipline I wouldn't generally dip into and good to see London from a different perspective. I think I would have liked to have read more personal stories, true to life rather than based on statistics, but was quite interesting reading while actually travelling on the Eastern section of the Central Line. Will definitely pass this on to my husband!

Do persevere with this slim volume because it offers plenty to think about. However, the task of communicating inequality could have been done a little better than just making the characters speak the statistics of their area. It's unrealistic and tires quickly. You can sense the author trying to find new ways to cover the same ground having committed himself to covering 32 stops.

Celebrating 150 years London Underground train system, Penguin commissioned some authors to write a book about the separate lines. Growing up in Bethnal Green on the Central Line I decided to read this one. It was quite interesting, taking one London station after the other, and naturally for me familiar territory. I enjoyed the little book very much.

Got more interesting as it went on--a mixture of Fiction and Non Fiction. I think it would be more interesting to readers who live in the south east and have travelled on the Central line. Lots of interesting statistics.

A snapshot of London is given through data and imagined examples of possible people and types living along the central line. One thing about this book is that it gets you to think about your journey to work more and think about inequality, education, housing etc as you progress along the journey.

0651frombrighton.u

Statistics through short stories. Interesting ideaI have the Reston the set to read, so I think it will work well with those, to help build a bigger picture of London.

This is ok, but if you're going to read only one Danny Dorling book in your life don't make it this one.

Social science gone wild!

well written, clearly well researched like everything else he writes and a seriously hard hitting reality check at the way London is built as a city. Makes you really think.