Looking for good reads about Boston (Holden: real estate, neighborhoods, living)

[ysbelman]

I ran into this thread Help Me Like Boston and found it fascinating to read. I actually took notes and going to visit some of the places mentioned there (rebuttals to "OP"). Fascinating insights into architecture, history and places to eat. Does anyone frequent to these boards have a list of their favorite threads? Unfortunately bb tools here aren't that great, so i can't search based on view/reply count, or can't figure out how to make that search. If anyone has good links to articles about Boston, random things about real estate, living here, culture, history, raising family, please post them. Curious where this will lead :)

[lrfox]

Read just about any post by ogre, a member here.

If you're into architecture, check out archBOSTON.org. A GREAT community for architecture and development geeks (like myself) in the area.

[ogre]

Geez, talk about putting someone on the spot! But thanks for the compliment, LR. Actually, there are a number of regulars here with a lot of insight into Boston and the Boston metro area. A few regulars who come to mind for frequently adding insightful and knowledgeable posts are Holden125, Brightdoglover, CaseyB the forum's moderator, Goyguy, Cantabridgienne, GF2020, Bostonian08, Beachcomber4. Oh yeah, and then there's some guy named LRFox. Eevee and TomDot come to mind as examples of members who post here only once in a while but offer good information when they do post.

I hesitated to name people, because I'm guaranteed to miss a lot of them. There are plenty of others I'm just not thinking of at the moment who provide a lot of good information. The key point is that we all have our areas of particular knowledge, so if you peruse the threads here and begin to check out the names you see frequently, the different features of the area that each of us is especially familiar with will add up to a good overall picture.

If you found the Help me like Boston thread interesting, you might also like this one I really don't like living in Boston. The thread title sounds negative, but the OP seemed more to be honestly finding that Boston was not what he'd expected, so, as I recall, a lot of the posts avoided having the defensive tone you can see when the OP starts off with an obvious attack, and instead offered some thoughtful insights into features of life in Boston which the OP might want to consider.

I don't read a lot of books or articles about Boston, so I can't make good recommendations for those. As for this forum, some thread topics that are likely to lead you to threads with good info on what the area is about are: things to see and do when visiting Boston; towns with "quaint" or "New Englandy" character; threads with titles like, Will Boston be a good fit for me, What I like about Boston, What I don't like about Boston, Which neighborhood/town would work for me (these often contain info that gives a good picture of an area's general character); and threads about social or political issues, which sometimes offer some insight about prevalent attitudes in the overall Boston area and particular local spots.

I'm sure there are other topics associated with threads that really deal with the character and feel of the area, and the local history, but those topics I've just listed are some good ones. If you really have a lot of time, you might even check out some of the threads started by people simply trying to learn some basics about towns and neighborhoods. Sometimes even these will contain some tidbits about a town's or neighborhood's character. Still, I'd suggest starting with topics relating to broader questions about the area, like those I suggested above.