An easy, short read but packed with insight and thoughtful commentary, Lanchester really captures the experience and larger sense of the tube (and through it, being a "Londoner"). Highly recommend for anyone living in the capital. ( )

This is clearly one of the more funny, intelligently written and entertaining of the bunch of books that are written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the London subway.

I love the way the author has noted and answered questions like "How do drivers reach the start of their working day if the subway doesn't run before that?" and "What's the difference between 'tube' and 'underground', if any?".

It's also notable that getting stuck in a train while underground may cause temperatures higher than 35 degrees; this is the legal limit for the transportation of livestock - but there really isn't one for humans.

Also, there are words on the complete isolation of the drivers. They may have no human contact for hours, and are forced - by means of concentration - to not listen to music or use their mobile phone while driving.

All in all: too short! I could have read double the amount that the author wrote on the subway, and he's not restricted it much to that of the District line, which is what the book is semi-made to be about. ( )

I really enjoy reading about the London Underground, its history and how it continues to grow deep (or not so deep) under one of the world’s most famous series. The Penguin Lines series was commissioned to celebrate 150 years of the London Underground in 2013 with one short book for each line. John Lanchester’s book is about the District Line and is non-fiction, asking questions that you may never have pondered about the Tube and then answering them in an easy to understand, interesting way.

The book opens with asking about how do Tube drivers get to work for the first service of the day. (To be honest, I had always thought that the Tube ran 24/7 because it’s London. But nope, the first train on the District Line leaves the depot at 4:53am. I also learned that the Tube is closed Christmas Day. Wow). It also asks, what’s the difference between the Tube and the Underground. This goes into a brief history of how the Underground began during Victorian times and the various companies and methods of constructing the lines were done. It also explains why there is a lack of air conditioning (to an Australian, that’s a jaw dropping fact). There are many other excellent facts that you shouldn’t announce to a packed carriage (why is covered later when discussing commuting), like rosters for Underground drivers are done 110 weeks in advance.

Overall, this is a friendly read that I read in a couple of sittings. I felt a little bad that I wasn’t reading it on a train, as the books are light with larger than usual font presumably for packed carriage reading (you could fit it nicely under the armpit of the person next to you). I think this series will be a nice midweek or in between longer book reads. It would be great to see a series for other iconic public transport lines, like the London buses or New York subway.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com ( )

This is Lanchester's intelligent and well-written submission to the Penguin series celebrating the 150th anniversary of the London Underground and Tube. It is not only entertaining but immensely interesting. He brought up many topics that I have not heard discussed before, such as how the Underground has affected demographics, who travels on it, why there are few movies set on the Underground as there are on, say, trains. Fascinating. This book was a wonderful surprise and now I am looking forward to reading more by Lanchester. ( )

London as it exists today would not be the same place without the Underground. The Underground is what gave the city its geographical spread, its population growth, its clusters of spaces and places.

This brilliant book by John Lanchester, whose most recent novel was the highly praised Capital, is part of Penguin's Underground Lines series, which celebrates the 150th anniversary of the London Underground, and it is one of the four books contained in the East-West: Penguin Underground Lines e-book I recently purchased. Unlike the trivial and very disappointing books on the Piccadilly and Hammersmith & City Lines, Lanchester's contribution is a superb exploration of the District Line, the Underground as a whole, and the profound effect that the system has had on the growth of the city and the everyday lives of its residents.

The District Line, which is aptly described as being like 'an older aunt who has seen better days', originated as the Metropolitan District Railway, and was later known as the District Railway, in order to distinguish it from the Metropolitan Railway, which began underground service in October 1863 between Paddington and Farringdon stations. The District Railway was created to provide a circular subsurface link to the major train stations in London, in order to allow commuters coming from the city's suburbs to quickly travel to their work places without having to navigate the city's congested streets. The first District Line service began operation in December 1868, which carried passengers between the South Kensington and Westminster stations, using steam locomotives to pull wooden carriages. The line has expanded significantly over the subsequent years, providing service to as far west as the posh suburbs of Richmond and Wimbledon, and as far east as Upminster.

Lanchester begins his book with a journey on the 4:53 am westbound train to Richmond leaving from Upminster, the first train of the day on the system. He observes his fellow passengers, initially blue collar workers from the East End off to their jobs in the City, who are then replaced by professionals who are employed in the financial district as he approaches central London and makes the return eastbound trip. He comments about the differences and similarities of the social and demographic groups that use the Underground, and the eastward displacement of the working classes, as the City and immediate East End neighborhoods have become less affordable to those earning modest salaries. Lanchester also speaks to Transport for London (TfL) workers throughout the book, who provide him with valuable insights into the Underground and the passengers who use it:

"I asked TfL workers about the demographic difference between the two ends of the line. 'Put it like this,' one of them said. 'If they're annoyed about something, at this end of the line' — we were at Dagenham — 'they yell at you. You know about it straight away. At the other end,' he said with a shudder, 'they write letters.'"

In subsequent chapters Lanchester expands his horizon to view the Underground as a whole, the effect of rapid transit on the development of cities, and the comparison of it to the metros of other cities such as Paris and New York, who created their systems decades afterward. He also discusses the psychology of passengers who ride the system; distinguishes between the terms Underground, which refers to the entire system, and the seemingly synonymous term Tube, which properly refers to the deeper level lines such as the Piccadilly, Northern and Bakerloo lines, and not the subsurface ones such as the Circle, District and Hammersmith and City lines; his personal fear of being in Underground tunnels, particularly when the train is halted between stations; the new air conditioned trains that will soon replace the 30+ year old ones that currently are in service; his experience riding alongside the driver of a train, and how it differs from being a regular passenger; the monotonous work day of an Underground train operator; and the different personas that Londoners assume when they travel underground.

The only complaint that I have about this book is that it ended far too soon. I absolutely loved it, and reading it has made me eager to drop everything else and read Lanchester's latest novel as soon as possible. ( )