For The Book Obsessed
[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] Sam J. Miller’s new book The Blade Between is not a laid-back read for a languid afternoon. No, this is a sit-up-straight book. Full of jarring juxtapositions, this book is as engrossing as it is challenging. While it requires your attention, The Blade Between rewards you with a heady, addictive mix of realism and … Read more
[ad_1] In her debut novel, The Opium Prince, Jasmine Aimaq centers a frequently overlooked aspect of tumult in Afghanistan: if opium were not in demand, possessing it wouldn’t translate into power. A hierarchy – a royalty of sorts – exists around the creation and distribution of opiates in the East, in no small part because … Read more
[ad_1] In the title story of Nicole Krauss’s fifth book and first collection of stories, To Be a Man, the narrative bends and breaks. Written in three sections with subsections, the narration shifts from first person to third, and then back to first. It’s only twenty-five pages. And it is as brilliant in execution as … Read more
[ad_1] For five years in a row the Chicago Review of Books has presented annual awards to the best works of poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and essay or short-story by Chicago-based writers. Last year we announced the first ever Adam Morgan Literary Citizen Award. Named for the site’s founding editor, the Morgan award is given to … Read more
[ad_1] “Acountryisclosingitsborder… (This is not today.)” “Pandemic/persecution/(The country has no conscience)… (This is not today).” In the first pages of M.I. Devine’s debut collection of experimental essays, Warhol’s Mother’s Pantry: Art, America, and the Mom in Pop, he calls back to the political turmoil of the early 1920s, when a pandemic raged and the U.S. … Read more