For The Book Obsessed
Should you read that book you’ve had your eye on? Will it totally rock or sink like a stone? Check out these book reviews from book lovers like you to help you find your next great read!
[ad_1] Summer brings warm weather and even hotter new releases, especially in Chicago. If you’re looking for a book to nestle up with as you dig your toes in the sand along Lake Michigan or another distant beach, our neighborhood authors are here to please. Here are some of the best Chicago-inspired fiction, poetry, nonfiction, … Read more
[ad_1] Stories about story-telling itself always risk a kind of self-congratulatory triteness. As lovers of narrative, we’re already aware of the power of story, and hopefully self-aware enough to see how stories change our perception of ourselves, of the world; breathless paeans to the medium itself generally leave me, pardon the pun, uninspired. Tautology bordering … Read more
[ad_1] Who among us doesn’t enjoy the idea of escaping the hectic pace of existence for a faraway, uninhabited island—a haven from life’s challenges and woes? For Artt, the enigmatic scholar and priest at the center of Emma Donoghue’s new novel Haven, set in seventh-century Ireland, the decision to turn his back on the sinful … Read more
[ad_1] In an interview with Rappahannock Review, Holly Pelesky described the process of planning to write a memoir during her MFA program: “We discussed what it was I had to say and in doing so, recognized I stored my memories in objects or places—tangible places.” The resulting book, Cleave, is a memoir told through the … Read more
[ad_1] Welcome to another installment of a collaboration between the Chicago Review of Books and the Your Favorite Book podcast. Malavika Praseed, frequent CHIRB contributor and podcast host, seeks to talk to readers and writers about the books that light a fire inside them. What’s your favorite book and why? Our guest is Adam Levin, … Read more
[ad_1] Babel, Or The Necessity Of Violence: An Arcane History of The Oxford Translators’ Revolution, a cross between historical fiction and sci-fi fantasy by R. F. Kuang indicts, educates and urges us to reframe—to (re)translate—the dominant narrative of what the West calls its civilization. Babel, brilliant both in concept and execution, is a page-turner with … Read more
[ad_1] I proudly call myself a fan of Old Hollywood, but until this year I had never seen a Rita Hayworth movie. I’d seen her famous pinup image for LIFE magazine, known vaguely of her as a 1940s “love goddess,” and watched clips of her in Gilda, but I’d never actually viewed any of her … Read more
[ad_1] It is a truth universally acknowledged that the undead do not blush. Or at the very least, it should be. In her novel Reluctant Immortals, Gwendolyn Kiste gifts her undead characters the ability to flush in both pleasure and embarrassment, among other markers of liveliness, despite regular reminders that within their bodies are hearts … Read more
[ad_1] In her 2018 short story collection Half Gods, Akil Kumarasamy drew upon both the imagined and the real in her intricately crafted tales of the Sri Lankan diaspora, whose characters were haunted by the impact of the Tamil genocide. In Meet Us by the Roaring Sea, her debut novel, we feel the same hauntedness … Read more
[ad_1] Brenda Lozano’s Witches, translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary, tells the story of the lives of two Mexican women: Feliciana, an aging curandera, or folk healer, living in a small rural village in Oaxaca who has gained an international reputation, and Zoe, a young journalist from Mexico City. Zoe is dispatched to interview … Read more