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] Works of criticism, or more broadly, texts that critically survey our world, often don’t subscribe to fixed genres or easily distinguishable forms. During a year that rattled our attention and pulled hard at our ability to concentrate, these books, in their varied forms, drew us in. Through their joy (and pessimism) and critical perspective, … Read more
[ad_1] John Muir said, “thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity.” Still true over a century later, I’ve turned to this phrase often during hard times and more often during 2020, which turned out to be one of the … Read more
[ad_1] The first sentence of Michael Bible’s latest novel, The Ancient Hours, is a lie. “We were innocent,” is an immediate provocation that gives the impression of someone in an interrogation room telling authorities a story agreed upon by a group of accomplices. Bible makes a bold statement beginning with this line, and also by … Read more
[ad_1] In Patricia Ann McNair’s newest collection Responsible Adults, many of the stories take place in a fictional town called New Hope. One can easily imagine a town with this name exists in the Midwest, and it’s also fitting for the theme: each story teems with an ache toward hope, a moodiness tinged with heartbreaking … Read more
[ad_1] It has been a hectic year, to say the least. Without being able to regularly go into bookshops to browse the tables and staff picks, new releases in translation that may have become some of your favorites might have instead slipped under your radar. Hopefully, this list of a baker’s dozen books will help. … Read more
[ad_1] Alchemy may no longer be considered a reputable or factual science, but it still shapes our current understanding of chemistry, physics, and biology. In her new book, The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300-1700, scholar and historian Jennifer Rampling shows that this influence is worth chronicling, not only for marking how attitudes towards science … Read more
[ad_1] Boldness incarnate. A laugh in the face of subtlety and propriety. These are fragmented phrases to describe Crosshairs by Catherine Hernandez, and they do not go far enough. Hernandez writes for herself, for the communities she represents, and for anyone who has ever felt othered in society. Her feminism is intersectional, her prose electric, … Read more
[ad_1] It seems like we’re always on the precipice of a short story renaissance, of the year that the length of our bestsellers finally aligns with our collective attention spans. While it’s hard to say 2020 was a breakout year for anything aside from disaster, it was still an embarrassment of riches for fans of … Read more
[ad_1] Last Thursday we celebrated the fifth annual Chicago Review of Books Awards, co-presented by StoryStudio Chicago. The “Chirby” awards celebrate the best books published by Chicago-based writers and poets–and the best essay published by a Chicago writer–in the past year. Here are 2020’s winners. Congratulations to everyone! (You can read the shortlist here.) Poetry: Too … Read more
[ad_1] In the forward to Black Futures—this eclectic anthology of Black imagination and achievement—co-editors Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham share its central question: “What does it mean to be Black and alive right now?” Of course, that “right now” is necessarily a misnomer, because the world has changed, is changing, from the time this project … Read more