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 […]
Tag: books
Posted inArts & Culture
A mystery on the home front
How do we contribute to making history every day? When we learn history, there’s often a huge emphasis on the leaders who make things happen, whether they are presidents, businessmen, or heads of social and political movements. But what about the people who make these movements happen: the ones who campaign for the presidents or […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The “singing mailman” with a unique gift
To write about John Prine, whose death from COVID-19 related complications in April 2020 devastated fans around the world, is an inherently intimate act. Prine’s music has always felt like a treasured good, sacred and familial. I felt that as a kid, hearing stories from my dad, who lived near Chicago in the 1970s and […]
Posted inBook Review
The chronicles of daily life
Sam Pink makes it look easy and it isn’t. Over some dozen books of poetry, stories, and prose, he’s refined a spare but precise style that reads like truth. He gives alley dwellers, dishwashers, and city wanderers the dignity and gravitas that other writers normally reserve for the upper echelon. Pink continues to write about […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The crossroads that made Chicago
Conceptually, the words “Chicago, Wisconsin” are sure to baffle almost anyone reading them today. The idea that Illinois’s metropolis (and the nation’s third-largest city) could somehow be a part of the Dairy State seems laughable. Too bound to the long and sordid annals of Illinois politics, despite at times feeling a million miles away from […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Why does he keep apologizing?
Is satire allowed anymore? We’re living through a period which largely demands literality from art. We want to know where the author stands. Unambiguously, with no shade or contradiction. Satire, on the other hand, lives in the gray and attempts to get at larger truths. Christian TeBordo’s new novel is set unreservedly outside the bipolarity […]
Posted inCity Life
Bridgeport needs a bookstore
Bridgeport is finally getting a bookstore. At the moment, neighborhood residents like myself have to travel to Pilsen or Hyde Park to get our fix. But a month or two from now, we’ll be able to walk into a store on Halsted stocked with some 60,000 hardcovers and paperbacks, on every subject imaginable. I can’t […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Race, fate, and sisterhood on the south side
“My earliest memory of myself is of my sister. My earliest understanding of my world comes from three women—my mother, grandmother, and aunt.” In her new memoir Three Girls From Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Story of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood, Dawn Turner turns her journalistic eye toward her own story, one she weaves as inextricable […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lit this month
September brings us a bevy of book-related, word-inspired, and otherwise literary events. Here’s a few to pencil into your calendar. The Paper Machete has returned to its performance home in Uptown at the Green Mill, to the delight of fans. The organizers describe it as a “weekly live magazine,” and while comedians are regularly featured, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Living Female Rock Critic spoke to me
The first time I read Jessica Hopper’s work, I was awestruck. Her essays in the online publication Rookie felt so emotionally honest in contrast to my own close-to-the-chest media consumption. I hadn’t heard the entire Smiths discography at that point (should I have?) or the Sex Pistols but in the interest of seeming cool, effete, […]
Posted inReader
A conversation between Maya Dukmasova and WBEZ’s Alden Loury about the state of accessible, affordable housing in Chicago
Online book launch party Wednesday, January 20, 6 PM – 7:30 PM CST
Posted inCity Life
Walking in a holi-daze
Upcoming events and distractions from our listings coordinator
Posted inCity Life
Mapping out a reader’s delight
Upcoming events and distractions from our listings coordinator
