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No. 91/92: A Parisian Bus Diary
In Autumn 2014, Lauren Elkin began keeping a diary of her bus commutes in the Notes app on her iPhone 5c, using it to take in the world around her. During that year, the Charlie Hebdo attacks occurred and Lauren had an ectopic pregnancy, requiring emergency surgery. At that point, her diary of dailiness became a study of how we digest major events personally and collectively as a city, observed from the height of the bus.
No. 91/92 is a love letter to Paris and a meditation on how it has changed in the two decades the author has lived there. It’s a celebration of community and a time when we could all observe each other in our fleshy up-closeness.
No. 91/92 is a love letter to Paris and a meditation on how it has changed in the two decades the author has lived there. It’s a celebration of community and a time when we could all observe each other in our fleshy up-closeness.
128 pages, Hardcover
First published September 7, 2021
26 people are currently reading
1380 people want to read
About the author
Lauren Elkin
28 books490 followersLauren Elkin is a widely acclaimed Franco-American writer, critic, and translator. Her books include Flâneuse: Women Walk the City, which was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel award for the art of the essay. Her essays on art, literature, and culture have appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Times, Granta, Harper's, Le Monde, Les Inrockuptibles, and Frieze, among others. She is also an award-winning translator, most recently of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel The Inseparables, and forthcoming fiction and non-fiction by Constance Debré, Lola Lafon, and Colombe Schneck. After twenty years in Paris, she now lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 122 reviews
January 30, 2022
Most probably your heart will not start missing a beat when I tell you the premise of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (2021) by Lauren Elkin: an American teacher jots down some impressions on her mobile while commuting to work on public transport in Paris. Poetics of the city as viewed through the bus, as the author put it.
It is not hard to guess that Lauren Elkin's favourite observation object is other passengers: I lose myself in other people's plot lines, I watch people who exist pretend to be people who don't exist. A bus turns out to be as good a way to view the city as another. Better, even. You're on the move. Taking it all in. Slightly above all the congestion it clears our sight like menthol clears our sinuses.
Although Lauren Elkin is a fan of the Oulipo — with no reciprocity though, as she sardonically stated — you will not find any extravagances in this book. The only unusual thing is the original spelling, with some typos preserved. Maybe it was an attempt to make the notes look more natural, more realistic.
After some time a parallel between the woman and the city becomes more and more visible: they both have to grapple with anxiety, grief and loss. For Lauren Elkin it is the loss of her baby, for Paris terrorist attacks. Deceivingly plain entries gradually turn into a moving account of coming to terms with trauma and efforts to go on against all odds. The simple, raw writing style works perfectly here. Emotional honesty always resonates better with me than pathos.
The impact of this book is inversely proportional to its size. Speaking of which, what is wrong with slight? How are we asking books to be when we dismiss them for being slight, what isn’t in them that “should” be there? (Lauren Elkin interviewed in The Paris Review).
It is really hard to explain what makes No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute so readable. The author's personality might be one of the answers. Lauren Elkin we get to know from her diary is a witty and sensitive person who loves literature. And, as usual, Paris besotted me tout de suite.
Photo by Nick Turpin.
It is not hard to guess that Lauren Elkin's favourite observation object is other passengers: I lose myself in other people's plot lines, I watch people who exist pretend to be people who don't exist. A bus turns out to be as good a way to view the city as another. Better, even. You're on the move. Taking it all in. Slightly above all the congestion it clears our sight like menthol clears our sinuses.
Although Lauren Elkin is a fan of the Oulipo — with no reciprocity though, as she sardonically stated — you will not find any extravagances in this book. The only unusual thing is the original spelling, with some typos preserved. Maybe it was an attempt to make the notes look more natural, more realistic.
After some time a parallel between the woman and the city becomes more and more visible: they both have to grapple with anxiety, grief and loss. For Lauren Elkin it is the loss of her baby, for Paris terrorist attacks. Deceivingly plain entries gradually turn into a moving account of coming to terms with trauma and efforts to go on against all odds. The simple, raw writing style works perfectly here. Emotional honesty always resonates better with me than pathos.
The impact of this book is inversely proportional to its size. Speaking of which, what is wrong with slight? How are we asking books to be when we dismiss them for being slight, what isn’t in them that “should” be there? (Lauren Elkin interviewed in The Paris Review).
It is really hard to explain what makes No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute so readable. The author's personality might be one of the answers. Lauren Elkin we get to know from her diary is a witty and sensitive person who loves literature. And, as usual, Paris besotted me tout de suite.
Photo by Nick Turpin.
June 16, 2024
The moments of history which shatter our every day are moments to redefine our togetherness.
The rest of the time, we're engrossed in our phones, same as anyone else, anywhere else.
This is the 18th book from the wonderful small independent press Les Fugitives - reviews of all of them at my dedicated Goodreads shelf.
'No. 91/92: notes on a Paris commute' is quite literally that, notes taken on a Paris commute on a bus, actually recorded on Elkin's phone:
The following entries were composed in the Notes app on a yellow iPhone 5c over a period of seven months, from September 2014 to May 2015, while riding the 91 and then the 92 bus in Paris to and from the university where I taught twice a week, and occasionally during other trips on public transport. The goal was to observe the world through the screen of my phone, rather than to use my phone to distract myself from the world. Along the way I thought a lot about how people live together, and experience trauma on an everyday level.
The trauma referenced includes both the societal - the Charlie Hebdo attack and the Hyper Cacher siege took place over 7-9 January 2015 - and the personal, the author suffering from an ectopic pregnancy. The Bataclan attack was 6 months after the end of the diary entries.
Twice each week Elkin takes the 91 bus from Port-Royal Berthollet, changing to the 92 at Place du 18 Juin 1940 and getting off at Ecole Militaire, and then returns later in the day.
This is the first of Les Fugitives' books not to be translated from French, but the fit with their list feels appropriate given the novel is infused with Parisian culture, with French phrases and snatches of conversation sprinkled throughout, and as explained in the author's Granta's Notes on Craft the literary antecedents of the book, rooted in French literature:
In an interview in the Guardian Elkin also gives a more informal, and personal, take on the origins of the book.
An example entry reads:
02/10/14
Thursday morning
n the early sunlight the sea foam green sign on the 21's forehead glows gold, as if it were passing for another bus, the yellow 83 perhaps. Maybe at night when we're all asleep the buses sneak out and try each other's routes. At any rate neither of these buses is my bus. In the morning rush to work the world is a little messy. A Mercedes has climbed up on the side-walk and waits there, its blinkers on; the car seems to know it's doing something not quite right; people of all ages scoot by on those razor things and sometimes they scoot into other people and every-one is grouchy but they move on quickly. There is much rushing across streets to make the light, especially from me, as you never know when the 91 bus might be lurking just down the road, ready to rush up the minute you're stuck waiting to cross the street. This morning I make the light, and sure enough the bus is approaching, almost empty. The magical mythical 8:12. I have made the magic bus. Almost as hard to catch as the cat bus in My Neighbor Totoro.
Neko no basu!
The bus diary comes with two further, lengthier entries. One is written on the metro 6 months later in November 2015, after the Bataclan and other attacks on 13 November (a powerful piece which resonated for me with taking the tube after the 7 July 2005 bombings in the UK). The other in March 2021, at the time that Elkin prepared the notes for publication, reflecting on the book from a post-pandemic perspective, and which contrast the collective unity that follows tragic events with the insularity of the commuter and their smart phone.
Recommended
The rest of the time, we're engrossed in our phones, same as anyone else, anywhere else.
This is the 18th book from the wonderful small independent press Les Fugitives - reviews of all of them at my dedicated Goodreads shelf.
'No. 91/92: notes on a Paris commute' is quite literally that, notes taken on a Paris commute on a bus, actually recorded on Elkin's phone:
The following entries were composed in the Notes app on a yellow iPhone 5c over a period of seven months, from September 2014 to May 2015, while riding the 91 and then the 92 bus in Paris to and from the university where I taught twice a week, and occasionally during other trips on public transport. The goal was to observe the world through the screen of my phone, rather than to use my phone to distract myself from the world. Along the way I thought a lot about how people live together, and experience trauma on an everyday level.
The trauma referenced includes both the societal - the Charlie Hebdo attack and the Hyper Cacher siege took place over 7-9 January 2015 - and the personal, the author suffering from an ectopic pregnancy. The Bataclan attack was 6 months after the end of the diary entries.
Twice each week Elkin takes the 91 bus from Port-Royal Berthollet, changing to the 92 at Place du 18 Juin 1940 and getting off at Ecole Militaire, and then returns later in the day.
This is the first of Les Fugitives' books not to be translated from French, but the fit with their list feels appropriate given the novel is infused with Parisian culture, with French phrases and snatches of conversation sprinkled throughout, and as explained in the author's Granta's Notes on Craft the literary antecedents of the book, rooted in French literature:
It took encountering the work of two French writers, Georges Perec and Annie Ernaux, for me to begin to see that the writing that happened in the diary could itself be a means of publicly engaging with the world. Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, in which he sat at a café in the Place Saint-Sulpice for three days and attempted to record all the comings and going he saw there – people, birds, buses – was an obvious reference point for me, and a permission-giving text in terms of helping me get outside the usual forms, subjects and procedures for book-writing. But so was Ernaux’s less well-known Journal du dehors, out in English this fall from Fitzcarraldo Editions as Exteriors translated by Tanya Leslie, in which she took notes on the people she saw on the RER train on her commute from her suburban home in Cergy-Pontoise (coincidently, the current location of all my notebooks) to central Paris.
...
Following their example, I was emboldened to think that a diary I kept on my phone on the bus could actually be a book that people might be curious enough to read
In an interview in the Guardian Elkin also gives a more informal, and personal, take on the origins of the book.
An example entry reads:
02/10/14
Thursday morning
n the early sunlight the sea foam green sign on the 21's forehead glows gold, as if it were passing for another bus, the yellow 83 perhaps. Maybe at night when we're all asleep the buses sneak out and try each other's routes. At any rate neither of these buses is my bus. In the morning rush to work the world is a little messy. A Mercedes has climbed up on the side-walk and waits there, its blinkers on; the car seems to know it's doing something not quite right; people of all ages scoot by on those razor things and sometimes they scoot into other people and every-one is grouchy but they move on quickly. There is much rushing across streets to make the light, especially from me, as you never know when the 91 bus might be lurking just down the road, ready to rush up the minute you're stuck waiting to cross the street. This morning I make the light, and sure enough the bus is approaching, almost empty. The magical mythical 8:12. I have made the magic bus. Almost as hard to catch as the cat bus in My Neighbor Totoro.
Neko no basu!
The bus diary comes with two further, lengthier entries. One is written on the metro 6 months later in November 2015, after the Bataclan and other attacks on 13 November (a powerful piece which resonated for me with taking the tube after the 7 July 2005 bombings in the UK). The other in March 2021, at the time that Elkin prepared the notes for publication, reflecting on the book from a post-pandemic perspective, and which contrast the collective unity that follows tragic events with the insularity of the commuter and their smart phone.
Recommended
November 22, 2022
This book already had a special place in my heart from the moment my eye fell on it. That was last week, in a bookshop in Paris, my favorite city.
I consciously read this book in different places; on the couch, in the bus or train, in bed... I loved it. It made me chuckle and it made me sad. Some parts truly touched me, gave me goosebumps, made me stop and think for a moment.
However small and light-hearted this book may seem, it has left its mark on me and I shall now (literally) carry it with me so that I can return to its pages whenever, wherever.
(* Note to self: try out metro (tram/train) poetry)
I consciously read this book in different places; on the couch, in the bus or train, in bed... I loved it. It made me chuckle and it made me sad. Some parts truly touched me, gave me goosebumps, made me stop and think for a moment.
However small and light-hearted this book may seem, it has left its mark on me and I shall now (literally) carry it with me so that I can return to its pages whenever, wherever.
(* Note to self: try out metro (tram/train) poetry)
July 10, 2023
'Catch up with email, catch up with Twitter, catch up with Facebook, catch up with Instagram, catch up with Pinterest, catch up with email'
Notes on a Parisian Commute is a series of entries written in the notes app on a yellow iPhone 5c while commuting to work on a bus in Paris.
Elkin's entries hold a mirror up as we wade through mundanity: it's debatable whether we'd like our reflections. The incessant routine of the day-to-day is clouding the art of living in the present.
If the bus is its own minute universe, then its inhabitants belong to micro-worlds of their own - glued to phone screens, weary of their fellow travellers - ghosts caught in purgatory. Ironically, Elkin manages to exist in the present via her own phone screen as she writes what she observes.
Elkin's prose is succinct, possibly owing to the environment, but this becomes endearing and accessible. The entries are elegant, perfectly encapsulating the humdrum: 'The morning rush to work is a little messy', and the blurring of reality and technology: 'The world outside looks like its been passed thru an Instagram filter the darks are darker the stone more wet'.
Interlinked with the running theme of people's lack of presence is the narrator's interest in the French novelist Georges Perec, particularly his work 'Species of Spaces', and the notion of how difficult it is to really see the world, and ultimately 'the place we look at the world from shapes the way we see it'.
Notes on a Parisian Commute also contrasts the ordinary with the extraordinary, its climax straddling sobering change amidst the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, mapping a City defiant in the face of tragedy.
Absolutely brilliant read. Moreish and relatable and as such easily mopped up in short space.
Notes on a Parisian Commute is a series of entries written in the notes app on a yellow iPhone 5c while commuting to work on a bus in Paris.
Elkin's entries hold a mirror up as we wade through mundanity: it's debatable whether we'd like our reflections. The incessant routine of the day-to-day is clouding the art of living in the present.
If the bus is its own minute universe, then its inhabitants belong to micro-worlds of their own - glued to phone screens, weary of their fellow travellers - ghosts caught in purgatory. Ironically, Elkin manages to exist in the present via her own phone screen as she writes what she observes.
Elkin's prose is succinct, possibly owing to the environment, but this becomes endearing and accessible. The entries are elegant, perfectly encapsulating the humdrum: 'The morning rush to work is a little messy', and the blurring of reality and technology: 'The world outside looks like its been passed thru an Instagram filter the darks are darker the stone more wet'.
Interlinked with the running theme of people's lack of presence is the narrator's interest in the French novelist Georges Perec, particularly his work 'Species of Spaces', and the notion of how difficult it is to really see the world, and ultimately 'the place we look at the world from shapes the way we see it'.
Notes on a Parisian Commute also contrasts the ordinary with the extraordinary, its climax straddling sobering change amidst the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, mapping a City defiant in the face of tragedy.
Absolutely brilliant read. Moreish and relatable and as such easily mopped up in short space.
November 2, 2021
The last essay/epilogue was moving and highlights Elkin's skills in academic writing. Unfortunately, the rest of the book seemed to rely on name dropping other authors and piggybacking on their ideas. Like Elkin's Flâneuse, the perspective and the appeal of this book is very limited--white American living in Paris--and sometimes comes off as pretentious. For example, I was disappointed with the author's observations of people in public transport who clearly came from less priviliged backgrounds than Elkin's. Again, like in Flâneuse, I felt this was a missed opportunity to try and bridge a connection with people from different backgrounds--which represents a central theme of this book: considering the humanity of strangers around you in everyday life.
October 18, 2021
The title says it all: these are the notes that Elkin wrote on her iPhone during the commute to and from her work. Written 6 years ago, but it took her a few years to consider these notes as a book. Don't wait that long, fellow readers (or do, this will still be very good in a few years time). Short tranches de vie, about personal as well as public experiences. Highly recommended.
Read
July 27, 2022this was so pretentious and masturbatory. my theory is she needed to prove that she was French enough to gain that coveted dual citizenship or whatever and so wrote this book to prove that she was a real parisienneeee (actually just an annoying American lady! “oh let me use the notes in my phone as a method of interacting with people rather than being like all the other sheeple who isolate themselves into their phone” literally stfu ). i actually read this three weeks ago and forgot to shelve it but also now, being in Paris, I’m also wondering why tf she doesn’t just take the gd metro instead of whining abt the bus all the time. The metro here is great.
Also— i love the bus! i love it! yes it’s slow and rickety and it is such in almost every city, but the bus is beautiful for its lumbering slowness. london was livable because of the bus on my hardest days there. i love taking the bus to the cloisters, it’s one of my favorite pilgrimages that gives me solace in New York. in Brooklyn during COVID, the bus being the one space I could go and see faces and sit with communal purpose. and i don’t like someone who writes a book just to complain but frame it as romantic meditation. Especially on the topic of buses (although I will still curse out the M60 at every chance I get ).
Also— i love the bus! i love it! yes it’s slow and rickety and it is such in almost every city, but the bus is beautiful for its lumbering slowness. london was livable because of the bus on my hardest days there. i love taking the bus to the cloisters, it’s one of my favorite pilgrimages that gives me solace in New York. in Brooklyn during COVID, the bus being the one space I could go and see faces and sit with communal purpose. and i don’t like someone who writes a book just to complain but frame it as romantic meditation. Especially on the topic of buses (although I will still curse out the M60 at every chance I get ).
March 8, 2022
A Frankston Bus Diary doesn’t have quite the same ring to it but inspired by Elkin’s A Parisian Bus Diary I have been using my bus commute time to pay attention. Very good writers seem to innately know what to pay attention to, the rest of us flutter.
March 28, 2022
A book about observations in public transit in Paris throughout ‘14-‘15. The author documents the outside world as she sees it, on her phone, in order to participate with her surroundings. She was using her phone to observe the world instead of a distraction from the world.
It was a short novel, 120 pages, and included entries of varying length. The format of the book was thoughtful and intentional, pages were left blank for impact. I really enjoyed that it succeeded in creating imagery with these modest paragraphs.
It was a short novel, 120 pages, and included entries of varying length. The format of the book was thoughtful and intentional, pages were left blank for impact. I really enjoyed that it succeeded in creating imagery with these modest paragraphs.
January 3, 2026
apart from the last 3rd of the book, the rest fell a bit flat and I would’ve loved a more deep and personal take, instead of just observations of people on the bus
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January 3, 2022I wrote about this book here: https://readingindie.substack.com/p/n...
March 29, 2024
Ότι πιο περεκικό έχει διαβάσει μετά τον Περέκ.
September 6, 2021
This book fell into my lap like a magic fruit, exactly when I needed it. It’s a short book, easy to read in one sitting, that is presented in a format very close to how it was written: as mostly brief entries in the author’s smartphone Notes app while riding the bus for her Paris commute. Even things like a lack of punctuation, typos, or autocorrected words have been preserved in places, which give the reader a somewhat voyeuristic experience, without detracting from its readability. Though the premise may seem mundane at first glance—a simple bus commute—the result is anything but, with a thrilling tribute to the importance of everyday living, and a window into life’s big and small tragedies, from terrorism to the loss of a wanted pregnancy.
December 14, 2022
picked this up cause i am a bus girl!!!! i really enjoyed the musings and observations on a daily commute - especially a bus journey. “what is it about the bus that makes people not want to read the newspaper or a book but only their phones. down below they still read on paper. up here on the surface its only screens.”
July 18, 2025
i don’t have anything unusually endearing to say about this.
in university, i took a class on public spaces: how we move through them, what they reveal about us, what we revel about them; we read Poe, Debord, Grace Ford; tried to make sense of how architecture and urban sprawl press into the fabric of daily life and shape not just behavior but belief. it was a short passage by Grace Ford - the author of Savage Messiah - that made me pick this book up, actually.
I give that context to say, maybe erroneously on my part, i came to this with the expectation that Elkin was going to dissect her surroundings; to unspool the ways space - particularly the space of a bus - can interact with things like identity, class, and care. and for the most part, that’s something she does. she has these beautiful, biting observations: how compassion thins when our own needs become transactional; how community sometimes only becomes visible in moments of forced, uneasy contact; how class is the scaffold underneath everything dictating who gets to go where, and how. her writing was exactly what expected it to be - especially during “semester one” -
… unit it wasn’t.
somewhere along the way, you see a shift in Elkin. she leaves behind the structured inquiry and turns toward the personal: less observation, more diary like. And I don’t mean to sound cold. I’m not unsympathetic to the person behind the page. but it’s a move that feels so deeply at odds with the precision that the book seemed to promise that it really left a sour taste in my mouth; it was like the sharpness of a lens suddenly blurring. Maybe it was an intentional move. I’m sure Elkin knows more than I do about what the book is meant to be, and i don’t mean to presume i know what she was thinking. but from this side of the page, it reads as a departure from the premise that the book seemed to present itself as: a study of how we relate to society, not just how she relates to herself.
I also didn’t love the roughness of the form. The “Notes app” of it all. I can see the goal of breaking open the polished, over-structured style of procedural texts; to make the language more direct, more present-tense. But to me, it didn’t register as intentional looseness so much as an excuse for shapelessness. Not bad, exactly, just a kind of ambient drift. Like it wasn’t quite sure if it wanted to be prose or poetry or criticism.
in university, i took a class on public spaces: how we move through them, what they reveal about us, what we revel about them; we read Poe, Debord, Grace Ford; tried to make sense of how architecture and urban sprawl press into the fabric of daily life and shape not just behavior but belief. it was a short passage by Grace Ford - the author of Savage Messiah - that made me pick this book up, actually.
I give that context to say, maybe erroneously on my part, i came to this with the expectation that Elkin was going to dissect her surroundings; to unspool the ways space - particularly the space of a bus - can interact with things like identity, class, and care. and for the most part, that’s something she does. she has these beautiful, biting observations: how compassion thins when our own needs become transactional; how community sometimes only becomes visible in moments of forced, uneasy contact; how class is the scaffold underneath everything dictating who gets to go where, and how. her writing was exactly what expected it to be - especially during “semester one” -
… unit it wasn’t.
somewhere along the way, you see a shift in Elkin. she leaves behind the structured inquiry and turns toward the personal: less observation, more diary like. And I don’t mean to sound cold. I’m not unsympathetic to the person behind the page. but it’s a move that feels so deeply at odds with the precision that the book seemed to promise that it really left a sour taste in my mouth; it was like the sharpness of a lens suddenly blurring. Maybe it was an intentional move. I’m sure Elkin knows more than I do about what the book is meant to be, and i don’t mean to presume i know what she was thinking. but from this side of the page, it reads as a departure from the premise that the book seemed to present itself as: a study of how we relate to society, not just how she relates to herself.
I also didn’t love the roughness of the form. The “Notes app” of it all. I can see the goal of breaking open the polished, over-structured style of procedural texts; to make the language more direct, more present-tense. But to me, it didn’t register as intentional looseness so much as an excuse for shapelessness. Not bad, exactly, just a kind of ambient drift. Like it wasn’t quite sure if it wanted to be prose or poetry or criticism.
November 19, 2021
Between 2014-2015, while teaching at a Paris university, during her bus commutes, the author used her cellphone not as distraction but to write down her contemporaneous thoughts and observations. Composed of diaristic entries, sometimes only a paragraph or a line, and invoking French author Georges Perec, who spent three days observing everything he could on a particular Parisian street corner, these memorialized bus commutes remind us of our recent pre-pandemic world, when commuting was likely an annoyance -- the delay of a bus or subway, how crowded they were, how obnoxious our fellow commuters -- and now, of course, reflect a more innocently communal time. It is because of the pandemic that this short book has meaning and heft. Indeed, before it, the author's editors weren't interested in publishing these diary entries. Kept largely unchanged, the entries, often mundane, sometimes funny, sometimes interesting, sometimes reflecting what was occurring in the author's life, sometimes intellectually charged with references to other writers, reflect that ordinariness of our prior lives, even when punctuated by world events, such as the terrorist attacks in Paris, or personal events, such as the author's ectopic pregnancy. As a New Yorker, I look forward to the day when my fellow riders are again annoying because they're sitting or standing too close to me, but perversely I think I'll feel a sense of loss when we return fully to a communal life that will again be hermetic - because we'll no longer smile at each other or strike up a conversation about this bizarre time we've been living through.
January 7, 2025
A book with an eye to the future of what a book can be (iPhone note app is conceptually tight) but this does a lot less than the oulipo works it is indebted to (specifically Perec, who is present throughout). Minor formal complaint — Elkin takes the taxi a lot in this book about a year “on the bus”. Maybe nitpicking, but think about it: the bus, the formal conceit, is a public space populated with people engaging in the symbolism and coding of public space — the taxi cab is a transitory non-place, often a sort of solitary experience. Different space with different baggage!
December 29, 2021
This slim volume is a collection of notes Elkin wrote to herself while commuting across Paris for her job. I loved Elkin's "Flaneuse," and one can see that mind at work here. Certainly there's not as much depth as her full-on scholarly work, but she has a keen eye, noticing what most of us miss, either by diverting ourselves from the boredom, or just incapable of the sort of perception Elkin possesses.
September 8, 2025
i'm happy to know that this collection of short notes could be and is a book! reading was pure joy for me, someone who has a long-term tender relationship with Paris.
September 26, 2021
This made me feel like I should be more productive on my commute. I did read all of this on the tube though so bonus points for me.
August 9, 2022
Really lovely to read even if the content itself was not always lovely
January 29, 2025
"There is so much we miss; none of us can have a total vision, or total understanding, of even just one place in our cities. This is a powerful and humbling thing to be aware of."
June 19, 2025
For the first part of this book I found it very inconsequential and wondered why Elkin’s thoughts and observations from her Parisian commutes had been published at all. At best peculiarities from everyday life, at worst boring and tedious.
But then I got to the last third of the book and the reflections on the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks and then the larger attacks in Paris in november 2015 as well as a personal tragedy give the book a poignancy that was lacking in the first part. Elkin’s descriptions of both communal grief and personal grief amidst a crowd of unknowns are very succinct and touching.
But then I got to the last third of the book and the reflections on the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks and then the larger attacks in Paris in november 2015 as well as a personal tragedy give the book a poignancy that was lacking in the first part. Elkin’s descriptions of both communal grief and personal grief amidst a crowd of unknowns are very succinct and touching.
August 4, 2023
91/92 (post)
thoughts thought on a bus, smth reaffirming and warm and comforting in that. the lack of polish on the work adds to this charm, it's something you or i could have written (maybe)
the end really picked up with some deeper themes — loosely, re unity (incl lack thereof) in the face of the charlie hebdo attacks, about the preciousness (more succinct synonym pls?) of potentiality (stealing for next chapter's spotify playlist thanku!) and the infraordinary (i confess i only stopped to understand this in its vague sense)
maybe 4.5ish, seems a bit irrelevant to be so precise idk
[REVIEW END]
[pers NB bc i'll probs forget when journaling: accompanied by selftitled album, deluxe version via earphones. i've come to skip these songs (some year i WILL have a new top artist), to listen via airpods (why don't they have the same audio feedback for play/pause?). so caught me multiple times taking breaks from the book to have a bit of a sob. followed by ABIIOR (also most frequently skipped) and wtf? these albums (i'm thinking NOACF too) are such markers in my life, was i really so angsty at so many points over the past X number of years? if i aggregate those years i'd surmise i'd has nothing much more than an uneventful trip through the formative years (i thought it was formulative) but gdang these bring back some intensely sad, angsty, isolated times. i would give anything (except more than €100 lol) to see them live again soon. perhaps they'll release another album to mark this angsty transitory period of my life, my deepest gratitude in advance!] (i've had such a fruitful time w my ramblings these past few days, what is in the water??)
p.s. T-minus 1hr until i'm THEREthere, home for 5months words cannot express-
thoughts thought on a bus, smth reaffirming and warm and comforting in that. the lack of polish on the work adds to this charm, it's something you or i could have written (maybe)
the end really picked up with some deeper themes — loosely, re unity (incl lack thereof) in the face of the charlie hebdo attacks, about the preciousness (more succinct synonym pls?) of potentiality (stealing for next chapter's spotify playlist thanku!) and the infraordinary (i confess i only stopped to understand this in its vague sense)
maybe 4.5ish, seems a bit irrelevant to be so precise idk
[REVIEW END]
[pers NB bc i'll probs forget when journaling: accompanied by selftitled album, deluxe version via earphones. i've come to skip these songs (some year i WILL have a new top artist), to listen via airpods (why don't they have the same audio feedback for play/pause?). so caught me multiple times taking breaks from the book to have a bit of a sob. followed by ABIIOR (also most frequently skipped) and wtf? these albums (i'm thinking NOACF too) are such markers in my life, was i really so angsty at so many points over the past X number of years? if i aggregate those years i'd surmise i'd has nothing much more than an uneventful trip through the formative years (i thought it was formulative) but gdang these bring back some intensely sad, angsty, isolated times. i would give anything (except more than €100 lol) to see them live again soon. perhaps they'll release another album to mark this angsty transitory period of my life, my deepest gratitude in advance!] (i've had such a fruitful time w my ramblings these past few days, what is in the water??)
p.s. T-minus 1hr until i'm THEREthere, home for 5months words cannot express-
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 26, 2022
this was a very quick read (took me less than an hour), a little book filled with notes app entries the author wrote while on the bus in paris. i kind of did expect a little more from this and found a big portion of this book rather trite. it did make me curious for the work of georges perec though.
below one of the few parts that resonated with me:
"So many books and films about cities take this as their premise: What if we'd made that train we missed by a second? Are we passing our soul mates on the tracks, in the train going the other way? We're learning this in a new way, after the attacks. If we'd had dinner in one place, instead of another. If we'd gone to see that gig, instead of the other. But what if we could turn this fear into the thing that gets us through this terrible time? We pass people in the street every day and we may not meet them for years, if ever. But we might one day—you just never know. And this must be at least one of the most potent meanings of community: potentiality."
below one of the few parts that resonated with me:
"So many books and films about cities take this as their premise: What if we'd made that train we missed by a second? Are we passing our soul mates on the tracks, in the train going the other way? We're learning this in a new way, after the attacks. If we'd had dinner in one place, instead of another. If we'd gone to see that gig, instead of the other. But what if we could turn this fear into the thing that gets us through this terrible time? We pass people in the street every day and we may not meet them for years, if ever. But we might one day—you just never know. And this must be at least one of the most potent meanings of community: potentiality."
December 30, 2022
(3.5 Stars)
Earlier this year, I read and loved Flâneuse, Lauren Elkin’s fascinating exploration of notable flâneuses down the years, a book that celebrates various women walkers in touch with their cities. Elkin’s latest book, No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute, shares something with its predecessor – a curiosity and a sense of engagement with the inhabitants of a metropolis.
From September 2014 to May 2015, while teaching at a Paris university, Elkin jotted down various notes during her twice-weekly bus journeys to and from work (the numbers 91 and 92 refer to the bus routes she used). These diary-style entries are presented in No. 91/92 with very few edits, preserving the spontaneous, unfiltered feel of Elkin’s impressions. The initial aim was for Elkin to observe her surroundings from the position of a commuter, using her phone to note these thoughts and observations; however, as the project progressed, a more personal record emerged – something I’ll return to later in this review.
Elkin openly acknowledges a debt to Georges Perec here. His book, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris (a collection of observations which Perec wrote as he sat in a café in Saint-Sulpice Square for three days in 1974), is clearly a touchtone for Elkin, as is the work of Annie Ernaux. Like Perec, Elkin is interested in capturing the regular rhythms of everyday life – not the big dramatic events or occurrences, but the small micro-observations that might otherwise go unnoticed.
The individual entries vary in length from just a few sentences (often unpunctuated) to a couple of paragraphs – few vignettes extend over a page. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Elkin’s fellow commuters feature heavily in these notes, highlighting a sense of curiosity about other people’s lives and the stories we imagine from the clues and hints we can see.
I clamber into a seat and move aside the coat of the man sitting next to me to keep from sitting on it. Excusez-moi I say politely. I have a headache. He is wearing too much cologne. When this man gets off the bus I notice his head is completely bald under his blue woolen beanie. Not the kind of bald that comes naturally for some men with age. I don’t know how I know he’s been sick, it’s just something I feel I know. (p. 17)
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2022...
Earlier this year, I read and loved Flâneuse, Lauren Elkin’s fascinating exploration of notable flâneuses down the years, a book that celebrates various women walkers in touch with their cities. Elkin’s latest book, No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute, shares something with its predecessor – a curiosity and a sense of engagement with the inhabitants of a metropolis.
From September 2014 to May 2015, while teaching at a Paris university, Elkin jotted down various notes during her twice-weekly bus journeys to and from work (the numbers 91 and 92 refer to the bus routes she used). These diary-style entries are presented in No. 91/92 with very few edits, preserving the spontaneous, unfiltered feel of Elkin’s impressions. The initial aim was for Elkin to observe her surroundings from the position of a commuter, using her phone to note these thoughts and observations; however, as the project progressed, a more personal record emerged – something I’ll return to later in this review.
Elkin openly acknowledges a debt to Georges Perec here. His book, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris (a collection of observations which Perec wrote as he sat in a café in Saint-Sulpice Square for three days in 1974), is clearly a touchtone for Elkin, as is the work of Annie Ernaux. Like Perec, Elkin is interested in capturing the regular rhythms of everyday life – not the big dramatic events or occurrences, but the small micro-observations that might otherwise go unnoticed.
The individual entries vary in length from just a few sentences (often unpunctuated) to a couple of paragraphs – few vignettes extend over a page. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Elkin’s fellow commuters feature heavily in these notes, highlighting a sense of curiosity about other people’s lives and the stories we imagine from the clues and hints we can see.
I clamber into a seat and move aside the coat of the man sitting next to me to keep from sitting on it. Excusez-moi I say politely. I have a headache. He is wearing too much cologne. When this man gets off the bus I notice his head is completely bald under his blue woolen beanie. Not the kind of bald that comes naturally for some men with age. I don’t know how I know he’s been sick, it’s just something I feel I know. (p. 17)
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2022...
January 10, 2022
i really loved this. this book succeeds in its mission without at all being insufferably alt lit or whatever else you would expect of a book written in iphone notes. (for what it's worth, i've felt since 2009 that iPhone notes had literary value, when I used the little yellow-notepad version on my first iPhone to record that I 'sneezed chocolate on my shirt').
I think that writers do sometimes go overboard with documenting the weird beauty of how we communicate in the 21st century (though i personally relished the 2004 masterpiece 'ttyl'), but this book struck the right tone/combo of empathetic, spare, and genuine.
looking forward to what else lauren elkin writes, or has written (will be googling interviews now)
also: I read this on the Brightline train (whose service was just reinstated after its march 2020 shutdown) from miami to west palm beach, after buying it at books & books in coral gables, which is my favorite bookstore in florida. all of that felt very apt for this book.
I think that writers do sometimes go overboard with documenting the weird beauty of how we communicate in the 21st century (though i personally relished the 2004 masterpiece 'ttyl'), but this book struck the right tone/combo of empathetic, spare, and genuine.
looking forward to what else lauren elkin writes, or has written (will be googling interviews now)
also: I read this on the Brightline train (whose service was just reinstated after its march 2020 shutdown) from miami to west palm beach, after buying it at books & books in coral gables, which is my favorite bookstore in florida. all of that felt very apt for this book.
May 12, 2022
so excellent, i don't really know what to say. i started commuting again in april for work, i write on the streetcar, i read on the streetcar, i think about the buses i would take in sydney to get to school and to the beach. will be re-reading forever, likely. i think anyone can get something out of this book, so long as they're alive right now; this isn't mitchel's mom's typical read but i think it's very meaningful and easy to get through so will offer it also later in the year, maybe when we are at a cottage in july.
April 18, 2023
I enjoyed that this little book of notes Elkin jotted down on her iPhone during her commutes prolonged my Paris vibes and nostalgia.
Bought it on Sunday chez Shakespeare and Company in dreamy Paris spring weather and finished it in harsh reality (cold and grey April doing a number) during my lunchbreak.
Not groundbreaking and it doesn‘t try to be, but a slice of everyday recent history if you will.
Bought it on Sunday chez Shakespeare and Company in dreamy Paris spring weather and finished it in harsh reality (cold and grey April doing a number) during my lunchbreak.
Not groundbreaking and it doesn‘t try to be, but a slice of everyday recent history if you will.
January 8, 2022
Loved this form, just transitory thoughts quickly written down. No real plot or intention, just observations of people who she'll rarely if ever meet again and moments that pass. It makes me want to do the same.
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