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NONFICTION Nuggets for the unloved THE LONELY CITY: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone By Olivia Laing 316 pp. Picador Reviewed by Marty Carlock This book is not for everyone.   Laing begins by musing, “Imagine standing by a window at night on the sixth or seventeenth or forty-third floor of a building. The city reveals itself as a set of cells, a hundred thousand windows, some darkened and some flooded with green or white or golden light. Inside, strangers swim to and fro, attending to the business of their private hours. You can see them, but you can’t reach them…(a) commonplace urban phenomenon…a tremor of loneliness, its uneasy combination of separation and exposure. “You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavor to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people.” Laing’s author photo, although a touch wistful, doesn’t look much like the solitary sad sack who narrates the book. Yet these are her recollected feelings from early...