Still planning your tasting menu for Thanksgiving? Then you’ll want to check out Easy Does It (2354 N Milwaukee). From 6-9 PM, they’ll be providing samples of over 35 drinks and other treats to inspire your holiday tables. As explained on Instagram, you can expect “lots of wine, beer, cider, no & low, aperitivos, vermouths, […]
Tag: books
Posted inBook Review
Rethinking equity in the built environment
The house next door to mine was torn down. My neighbors don’t quite remember the year, but the resident local historian, Maurice, who has lived on the block since the late 60s, was shipped off to Vietnam and, upon his return in 1972, the house had vanished. The product of “slum clearance” on Chicago’s west […]
Posted inBook Review
Modeling vulnerability
“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” —Zora Neale Hurston This quote has been on my mind recently. It is in the epigraph of a recent read: Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In the Dream House, a title which also appeared in the acknowledgments of the book at […]
Posted inAgenda
House of the Exquisite Corpse, Pilsen Open Studios, Panther Party, and more
Pilsen Open Studios is happening from noon-8 PM today and tomorrow along 18th Street and elsewhere in the neighborhood from Halsted to Western. Galleries, artists, and vendors invite visitors and neighbors to experience the hyperlocal arts community. This 20-year-old event celebrates aesthetic traditions and innovations within hip-hop, muralism, screenprinting, self-publishing, graffiti, and more. Appreciators, admirers, […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Food books are falling this month
Four titles dropping over the next four weeks—by a quartet of heavy hitters—offer plenty of projects for the cold weather kitchen-bound.
Posted inLit Feature
Printers Row Lit Fest embraces Chicago’s writers
Printers Row Lit Fest has been bringing all things literary to the streets of the Printers Row neighborhood for 37 years. The festivities return for the second weekend of September with a packed schedule of events. The festival is many things to many people: a homage to the publishing industry, a shopping spree for book […]
Posted inAgenda
Healing Circle, Nitrate Kisses, disasters, and punk rock
Hopefully you’ve been following our recent comics journalism pieces on art and artists created by Reader contributor and former Chicagoan Coco Picard (her latest, an interview with artist and professor Nick Cave, was in our August 18 issue). If you’re intrigued by Picard’s comics style, check out her debut novel The Healing Circle, a magical […]
Posted inBook Review
The extraordinary tragedy of daily life
Wolfgang Amadeus Aleksandr “Aleks” Fa has a lot of baggage. The protagonist of Joe Meno’s new novel Book of Extraordinary Tragedies has that name, after all—which also serves as a clue about what burdens the young man. Born into a perfectionist but impoverished Bosnian/Croat/Polish family in Evergreen Park on the border with Chicago’s south side, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The ghosts of the drowned villages
“Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink,” Coleridge’s sailor complains in the famous 1798 poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The mariner is talking about the plight on his ship, but he may as well be describing the city of New York. That year, a yellow fever epidemic led to an outcry over […]
Posted inArts & Culture
It’s not just personal, it’s policy
Rates of suicide have skyrocketed since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and mental illness is more prevalent today than ever before. However, the societal causes of mental illness are still not widely recognized, so people who suffer mental illness are often treated as though the problem is entirely their own to solve. A new novel, released […]
Posted inArts & Culture
True biz? There’s a lot to learn in Sara Nović’s new book.
“Eyeth—get it? In the Deaf storytelling tradition, utopia is called Eyeth because it’s a society that centers the eye, not the ear, like here on Earth.” That’s the opener to “Ear vs. Eye: Deaf Mythology,” one of the many brief lessons sprinkled between the chapters of Sara Nović’s realistic fiction novel True Biz, released March […]
Posted inArts & Culture
It came from the south side
When do you cross the line from casual collector to full-on vintage reseller? For Michael W. Phillips Jr., a south side-based film programmer and copy editor, the moment happened in 2019 when he started posting books for sale on Instagram under the name It Came From Beyond Pulp. A more robust eBay store followed, and […]
Posted inLit Feature
Let’s get lit
Here are some book-related, word-inspired, and otherwise literary Chicago events to help kick off 2022. Each event is open to the public, but registration or tickets might be required (and you’ll want to support the writers by buying their books!). Wed 1/19, 6:30 PM: City Lit Books co-presents its regular Poetry Salon in an online […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The best Chicago books of 2021
Every year, I wonder if Chicago’s literary renaissance will ever start to ebb. No city can keep this up forever, right? But just like last year and the year before, dozens of new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry books by Chicagoans garnered national acclaim in 2021. In no particular order, here are my favorite Chicago books […]
Posted inCity Life
The Reader’s 2021 Gift Guide
Here are some goods, places to donate, and more ideas to consider for this Chicago gift giving season. And remember, you can always find items that support the Chicago Reader at our gift shop, store.chicagoreader.com. Adam M. Rhodes, staff writer and co-host of Chicago Queer & Now A donation in any amount to Brave Space […]