For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Henry David Thoreau observed that men often lead lives of quiet desperation, and although he omits women, they often also lead lives of quiet desperation, as is the case for the women under examination in Genevieve Plunkett’s debut story collection, Prepare Her. In this collection, the domestic lives of female protagonists come under scrutiny, … Read more
[ad_1] Chris Stuck knows what he’s doing. In Give My Love to the Savages, his debut short story collection, deliberation and intention shine through. These are stories centered around the anguishes of Black men, rendered here as both heroes and antiheroes. The stories are forthright with their unpacking of masculinity, grief, and identity. And at … 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? This week’s guest is Dean … Read more
[ad_1] Before creating his world-beating radio program The Best Show, Tom Scharpling wrote punk zines, covered the NBA, produced the TV show Monk, and auditioned (unsuccessfully) for The New Monkees. Every indie musician’s favorite comic, Tom writes and performs with Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster and has directed videos for artists including Kurt Vile, Aimee Mann, … Read more
[ad_1] Haunted by stories he hears while on jury duty, a documentary filmmaker finds himself in an abandoned mall at the dead of night. My fault. As usual. “Documentary filmmaker,” the prosecutor said, not looking at me or any of the other prospective jurors. He wasn’t even looking at his legal pad, only … Read more
[ad_1] I was first introduced to Willa C. Richards’s The Comfort of Monsters in a 2018 graduate-level writing workshop when Willa brought in two early chapters for discussion. It was the type of reading experience a reader never forgets. In the excerpt, the narrator Peg remembers going to a bar in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood … Read more
[ad_1] Though the COVID-19 pandemic has understandably dominated most of the conversation around public health in the last year and a half, it has been running alongside—and intertwining with—another crisis: the “loneliness epidemic.” For years leading up to 2020, experts have been warning us about the effects that modern-day loneliness can have on our minds … Read more
[ad_1] A middle-aged white woman walks down the street to the grocery store and convinces herself that she’s different than the other women she’s passing by. That the self-reflexive thoughts she’s having, the awareness of being a privileged white person, who voted for Hillary Clinton, and didn’t want any of this to happen, and has … Read more
[ad_1] In Runner, Tracy Clark’s newest crime novel, Chicago is built on networks: the safety nets that catch the vulnerable as they fall—foster home placements, a night bus full of snacks and blankets—but also the webs spun to catch those who slip through when the first nets fail. Runner is the fourth in Clark’s series … Read more
[ad_1] A while ago there was that obviously bad take that “horror cannot be set in space,” which, if nothing else, gave folks an excuse to revisit the space-horror splendors of films like Alien and Event Horizon. Space is a great setting for written horror, as well—the brutally unforgiving vacuum, the possibility of alien monsters, … Read more