For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial, by Mona Chollet, is a revelatory collection of histories and experiences that have been carefully ignored across centuries of time. Even a devoted reader will find it difficult to think of a book besides Chollet’s that does … Read more
[ad_1] Among the array of ignorant comments some Americans make about immigrants is one that anyone is lucky to live here. Setting aside this country’s terrible history (and very flawed present), such reductionist remarks ignore the significant costs of leaving one’s home country. Sindya Bhanoo’s debut story collection, Seeking Fortune Elsewhere, confronts these tolls head-on, … Read more
[ad_1] From the beginning of recorded history, there’s one thing we’re all certain about: one day, this is all going to end. “I am writing this book because we’re all going to die,” says Kerouac, in Visions of Cody, a eulogy in book form to his friend Neal Cassady. But in a sense, all books … Read more
[ad_1] I’ve heard people claim that they wish that they were religious in the fundamentalist mode, because it would be so much easier. Easier, they mean, because while the non-believer is a grown-up person who understands that God—like Santa; or like notions of fairness and romance—is dead, the believer still trusts with childish naivety in … Read more
[ad_1] Maybe it’s odd to compare your husband’s cancer diagnosis to the plot of Lost. Maybe it’s odd to recognize the absurdity of death’s first partial hold on us in the structure of a television show. Yet this is precisely what Kathryn Davis does in her memoir: she sees that “the system governing [cancer’s] bestowal … Read more
[ad_1] In Rebecca Kauffman’s fourth novel, Chorus, family relationships, especially those between siblings, are dissected to expose all their messy and glorious complexities. Kauffman accomplishes her dissection of the Shaw family through a linked-story structure. The narrator’s role rotates among the seven Shaw siblings and their father and spans from 1911 to 1959, though not … Read more
[ad_1] Talking with Meghan O’Rourke—the accomplished poet and editor-in-chief of The Yale Review—about her new book was a rare and meaningful opportunity for a substantive personal and professional conversation about a subject that impacts every aspect of my day-to-day life. Deciding how to write an introduction for this interview presented the real challenge: how much of … Read more
[ad_1] Nostalgia, maybe the sweetest and purest of human emotions, carries within itself its own poison. Dwelt on briefly, nostalgia can fade into a sighing sadness. It can transform into frustrated,grasping sorrow for a time or a feeling that can never come back. With the slightest shove, nostalgia can turn bitter and angry. In Dreadful … Read more
[ad_1] We don’t know how you’re feeling, but it’s been a long and difficult winter here in Chicago. Good reading weather, perhaps, but we’re looking forward to the warmer days and longer hours of light just ahead, when we can start shedding our layers and knocking the snow off our boots and maybe sit outside … Read more
[ad_1] “Anyway, a proper pandemic might be quite good for the environment,” says a character in Sarah Moss’s 2009 debut novel, Cold Earth. “Depopulation from the plague did wonders for medieval fauna and flora.” More than a decade later, The Fell—which was published in the UK in 2021—explores that “proper pandemic” scenario through the lives … Read more