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Reading: comfort and wisdom

Here’s what I’ve been reading and liking lately.

shoppingEvicted is a thick work of nonfiction by sociologist Matthew Desmond, about tenants and landlords in a poor part of Milwaukee. The book is richly told, detailed, Dickensian. I liked the telling more than the tale, which is depressing, heartbreaking, hopeless. Women and children, the disabled, the underemployed, the drug addicted losing their homes. Housing as a human right? I’m sold.

imagesOn to a big read, The Nix, by Nathan Hill, which tells the story of a young man who must reunite with the mother who abandoned him as a child, who has resurfaced as a political terrorist. This read is a wild ride that spans continents and decades, mostly set in and around contemporary Chicago. It’s a coming of age story, a love story, a satire, a terrifying on-the-ground retelling of the 1968 Chicago riots. 620 pages, so much to like.

images-1In my post-election funk, I needed comedy. Francine Prose’s Mister Monkey was my salve. From a musical that never goes out of style — Mister Monkey — we enter the lives of actors, the director, the author, a man and his grandson in the audience. What a delightful web! Each of their stories entrances; I especially loved the grandfather in the mix with today’s fussy parents and the school teacher on a first date from hell. Sweet, funny, surprising. A rollicking read.

Also in the blog

Good friends made it easy to show off Chicago’s rich offerings of art, architecture, parks, museums and food this weekend. Affable and curious, they had ideas of what they wanted to see and experience while in town, but didn’t overdo it. With just a few hours left on Sunday, could they get to Ernest Hemingway’s

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I gave up on e-books years ago. I hated the clicking noise to “turn” the page; I couldn’t “see” how far I’d gone; I forgot the title of the book I was reading. Sure, it makes sense for traveling, but not for me. I’d rather weight my bag with a book, or three. There’s another

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At our summer place in Quebec, I can read for hours without interruption. Recently there, I inhaled A Laodicean by Thomas Hardy, an author I read repeatedly. This one is not like his others because its heroine is not undone by men (i.e., Tess of the d’Urbervilles.) Paula Power, the only daughter of a railroad magnate,

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