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] Authors have spared few words when writing about the beauty and bruises of Chicago throughout its history as a literary muse. But for every story that leans into nostalgia and earnestness, rarely have we seen fiction that explores the more absurd aspects of the city and those who lead it. Nelson Algren once wrote … Read more
[ad_1] I’ve long been fascinated by the composition of our lives—how pains and traumas, tiny joys, and mundane moments collide with others’ experiences and are set against global catastrophes. I remember wishing I could find a novel that conveyed this, but I didn’t find one that quite did until Coco Picard’s debut novel, The Healing … Read more
[ad_1] Demystifying the world is central to many coming-of-age stories. Often in these stories we find a wide-eyed, hopeful young person who journeys out into the world seeking to manifest their ideals, only to face impersonal cruelties and structural tragedies which force them to reassess who they are, who they want to be, and the … Read more
[ad_1] Kiki de Montparnasse. Such a great name. It’s an exciting name, an erotic name, a name that evokes a certain place and a certain time. But it’s not a name that we immediately recognize, although her image is. I asked my small circle of friends and associates—most of whom have more than a passing … 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 this week is … Read more
[ad_1] I somehow ended up reading two books about deer at the same time: Olga Tokarczuk’s 2009 novel, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and Dashiel Carrera’s debut novel, The Deer. After striking a doe on a lonely road at night, Carrera’s narrator, Henry Haverford, fumbles … Read more
[ad_1] Anyone who has lost a beloved pet knows the profound grief that can accompany this experience. And yet, while there are many codified rituals for mourning a human loved one, mourning a pet’s death can be more amorphous. In her compassionate and revelatory new book Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter, author … Read more
[ad_1] In her essay “Fairy Tale Is Form, Form Is Fairy Tale,” Kate Bernheimer balks at critics who pan fairy tales, fabulism, and other genres where magic insinuates itself in everyday experience. Bernheimer instead points out that the fairy tale’s grimness and infinite possibilities energize even writers of literary realism and every fiber of their … Read more
[ad_1] Much of Adam Langer’s finely wrought, raucously funny, and startlingly insightful new novel, Cyclorama, occurs within “The Annex,” an insular and endlessly drama-steeped theatrical enclave of a magnet high school just north of Chicago. True to its title, which refers to a 360-degree canvas in a theatrical rotunda, fashioned to provide a changeable visualization … Read more
[ad_1] Upon returning to Nuremberg after two years in Venice, an inspired Albrecht Dürer decided to combine the Italian and Germanic styles in a study of human form. He would paint a life-size diptych depicting a male and female nude, an expansion of an engraving he had carved before embarking on his Venetian trip. He … Read more