Le very Cool indeed

[via Andrew & Ben]

I’m excited to learn of the latest Le Cool guides’ imminent arrival: four of them, including one for my adopted home city, London, as well as Madrid, Amsterdam and Lisbon. There’s been only one Le Cool book so far – Barcelona – but it’s a thing of great beauty, written by friend and peerless cultural truffle hunter Andrew Losowsky.

To describe it as a city guide would be to do it a huge disservice; the name suggests dull lists of ten museums, a restaurant guide that’s out of date and a slightly inadequate set of maps in the back.

Le Cool books miss out the guide book cliches. Instead, there’s gorgeous design, careful writing and, of course, any guide’s principle currency: great recommendations. Indeed, I’m rather looking forward to finding lots of cool little places in London that I never knew existed. This I fully expect; I’m not, alas, cool enough to write one of these, which is one of the reasons they’ll do so well.