For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] The self-help book never goes out of style because we always want more. The billion dollar market continues to grow each year, but the gist remains the same: make money, save time, be present, find joy. They promise that we all have the potential to self-actualize in the career of our dreams. But what … Read more
[ad_1] Karin Tidbeck is one of those writers whose work is delightfully hard to pin down to a genre—their work includes fantasy and science fiction, but slips between genres to new and stranger places. In their new novel, The Memory Theater, Tidbeck has crafted a kind of modern folktale. Inventive, surreal, at times violent, the … Read more
[ad_1] Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts is one of the most buzzed-about debuts of this year. The premise is intriguing: On the eve of Trump’s inauguration, a blogger finds out that her boyfriend is secretly a conspiracy theorist. She decides to dump him rather than confront him right away. The secret knowledge that Felix, her boyfriend, … Read more
[ad_1] Priyanka Champaneri’s enthralling debut novel, The City of Good Death, winner of the 2018 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, is a heart-warming read about a city where people come to die in peace and the beauty of being alive, enhanced by the unapologetic presence of death in the lives of its characters. … Read more
[ad_1] It’s an unexpected delight to be able to review previously-unseen work by the late Roberto Bolaño 18 years after his death. Bolaño—the Chilean poet-novelist perhaps most known for his books The Savage Detectives and the already-posthumously published 2666, both translated into English by Natasha Wimmer—left an abundant back catalog of poetry and prose after … Read more
[ad_1] The climate crisis is so rapidly laying waste to our world that it can be depressing to even attempt to comprehend it. We’re in the midst of a mass extinction period brought upon by human greed and soulless expansion. Billions of years of unique evolution have been ripped out from under us by a … Read more
[ad_1] We are excited to announce a collaboration between the Chicago Review of Books and the Your Favorite Book podcast. Malavika Praseed, frequent CHIRB contributor and podcast host, asks readers and writers one of the hardest questions there is: what’s your favorite book, and why? Joining us this week is Dantiel Moniz, author of the … Read more
[ad_1] It’s an unexpected delight to be able to review previously-unseen work by the late Roberto Bolaño 18 years after his death. Bolaño—the Chilean poet-novelist perhaps most known for his books The Savage Detectives and the already-posthumously published 2666, both translated into English by Natasha Wimmer—left an abundant back catalog of poetry and prose after … Read more
[ad_1] It’s been five years since Cortney Lamar Charleston’s debut, and Doppelgangbanger is more than worth the wait: it’s a kaleidoscope of a collection effortlessly combining cultural signposts with philosophical ruminations about identity, place and self-determination. Charleston explores the ways that spirit and body can be restricted, harmed, and too often obliterated in our society … Read more
[ad_1] In an interview for The Believer, graphic artist turned novelist Peter Mendelsund elaborated his own approach to literature by using a surprising comparison to another art: puppetry. The audience of a puppet show is observing two stories simultaneously, “the diegetic material that the puppets are performing, and the actions the puppeteer is performing.” In … Read more