Each month, we present a brand-new book about which we're so enthusiastic that we guarantee it 100%.  Our first of 2010 is a non-fiction homage to Mexico City: El Monstruo by John Ross.  Here's Nick's blurb:

In his introduction to El Monstruo, John Ross starts small and immediate: he describes his room in the crumbling Hotel Isabel where he has lived since the disastrous earthquake of 1985 that left Mexico City leveled in the same way the 1906 Big One flattened San Francisco. Ross starts out small, but builds quickly from there in this history of Mexico's capital.

In fact, his tale of the down-and-outs, the prostitutes--those who make up his teeming city--is more of a love affair with a haggard and desolate lover; much like Bolaņo's Chile or Saramago's Portugal. This book consumed me. It made me yearn for and recoil from Mexico City all at once. It is the literary and historical heartbeat of a city that always seems on the brink of destruction but somehow lives on. It is a beautiful and heroic tribute.   --npb