For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] American Book Award-winning author Sandra Cisneros has had a decades-long career publishing both prose and poems, and is perhaps most well known for her first book, The House on Mango Street, a novel told in vignettes. She often mixes Spanish and English, putting to words the in-betweenness of her dual U.S.-Mexico citizenship. Woman Without … Read more
[ad_1] A.M. Homes has always been the salty bag of snacks I can’t resist even if it makes me feel a bit queasy. I say this, as an unabashed and hopelessly devoted binger. What hooked me early on was her unvarnished fearlessness, her startlingly refreshing honesty, her willingness to unsettle the reader. Her wit and … Read more
[ad_1] In the protean landscape of contemporary fiction, the historical novel is among those having something of a moment. Given the literary world’s apparently endless quest for ever-marketable books placed within ever-tightening niches, this is on the whole not overly surprising. With access to real worlds that feel alien and actual characters lending themselves easily … Read more
[ad_1] I first came across Gwendoline Riley’s work via Andy Miller’s glowing recommendation on his podcast Backlisted, in which he praises My Phantoms, her latest novel, as “a page-turning discomfort read.” And it is uncomfortable. It’s also darkly funny and incisive. But perhaps the word that best describes it is cold. Over the course of … Read more
[ad_1] Chen Chen traverses a wide ground in Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, past and present, personal and universal, and does so with irreverence to the conventions of didactic poetry and the white western canon. In these past fraught years of Trumpism, the COVID-19 pandemic, and upticks in Asian American violence, Chen approaches … Read more
[ad_1] Mostly written during the last several years, the poems in Normal Distance, Elisa Gabbert’s highly-anticipated new collection, speak to the disjunctive nature of our times. Yet the juxtaposition of the philosophical and quotidian, often playfully rendered, belies the dexterity involved in crafting these striking poems. Also a well-regarded critic and essayist, Gabbert’s charming, inquisitive mind … Read more
[ad_1] In her insightful and ambitious debut novel, Habilis, Alyssa Quinn takes us on a destabilizing journey through the experiences of several beings by means of a single, muddled existence, illustrating the connectedness of all life and challenging the notion of a discoverable, and inherently meaningful, point of human origin. Through techniques and analyses both … Read more
[ad_1] On weekends, Caroline Macon Fleischer totes her typewriter to street festivals to write poems on demand. She volunteers for the Chicago collective Poems While You Wait, which delivers poetry in unexpected places. Poetry is often condemned for being unlikeable, but the evidence to the contrary is in her sign-up list. Given topics that range … 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 Joe Meno, … Read more
[ad_1] How many times have you walked on a beach? Generally, the experience is pleasurably common: you feel the sand between your toes, you pick up seashells, you hold hands with a loved one while you watch the sunset, you feel a light ocean breeze on your cheeks. What is uncommon, however, is if you … Read more