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] For the fifth year in a row, the Chicago Review of Books is thrilled to present the CHIRBy Awards to recognize the best fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and short essays published by Chicago-based writers. Below are the finalists in each category for 2020, along with a list of this year’s judges. Congratulations to all of these incredible writers! … Read more
[ad_1] I’m tempted to say the modern idea of genre is a joke, except that it’s not funny. A sincerely curious, skilled, and committed writer can basically write whatever she wants, genre be damned. Yet certain genres are still elevated and others dismissed; the New York Times “By the Book” feature still regularly asks writers … Read more
[ad_1] Suzanne Roberts’ most recent memoir, Bad Tourist, will come as a delightful surprise to readers as she merges all of her writing strengths: a travel writer’s adventures, a memoirist’s insight, and a poet’s ear for language. Roberts, an accomplished travel writer, was named “The Next Great Travel Writer” by National Geographic Traveler magazine, and her previous book Almost Somewhere; Twenty-Eight Days on … Read more
[ad_1] In Burning Roses, S. L. Huang treats a fairy tale as merely the prologue to the rest of a life. We meet Little Red Riding Hood, Rosa, as an older woman already looking back on her life. The famous encounter with the wolf at her grandmother’s house is long behind her—far from the guiltless … Read more
[ad_1] In his new book, This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s “Kid A” and the Beginning of the 21st Century, a story centered on the Radiohead album Kid A, music critic Steven Hyden—without meaning to—asks the “Where were you when…” question regarding the album’s release: “I know I bought Kid A the day it came out, as … Read more
[ad_1] In My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies, author Resmaa Menakem challenges us to think of white supremacy as “white-body supremacy” because “every white-skinned body, no matter who inhabits it — and no matter what they think, believe, do, or say — automatically benefits from it.” In … Read more
[ad_1] Sixteen years after the publication of her breakout novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke’s second novel has arrived. The new novel, Piranesi, bears a family resemblance to its predecessor, sharing its unique creative vision and a detailed approach to the fantastic. Though these features appear in a very different time and place, … Read more
[ad_1] Like a murmuration of starlings, Toni Jensen’s new book Carry changes its shape constantly and effortlessly. Its subtitle is A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land, but this book is more than a memoir. It is also a revealing lexicon, a sharp analysis, a well-sourced argument, and a damning indictment. Its form changes even … Read more
[ad_1] Inequality may be as old as human society, but never has it been this extreme, quantifiable and remediable. We’ve seen everyone from the Pope to Bernie Sanders to Thomas Piketty break it down. In meme-speak, guillotine GIFs have been proliferating on Twitter since 2016. But COVID-19 has made the message irrefutable. The fallout from … Read more
[ad_1] Double agents, covert operations, moles, dead drops, deep-sixed tapes, election meddling, secret identities, enhanced interrogation, brush passes, assassinations — when it comes to spy work, there is no shortage of bizarre and misshapen determinants that capture one’s imagination. And if these things are happening, what else is going on? The possibilities seem endless, especially … Read more