Gail Levin’s magnificent Lee Kranser biography was hard to give up and now I know why. Three disappointing reads in a row? John Steinbeck’s “The Winter of Our Discontent” was engaging but cartoon-y, a precursor to all things Updike. Adam Gopnik’s “Winter” essays are — I can’t believe I’m going to use this word for

A shared prize set novelist Jonathan Franzen (“Freedom”) and biographer Isabel Wilkerson (“The Warmth of Other Suns”) on the same stage last Sunday. http://www.chicagohumanities.org/ through Nov. 13th. (Thanks for the treat, Deborah.) Migration figures in both works. In “Freedom,” Patty leaves the East Coast for a kinder, gentler life in the Midwest. In “Warmth…” six million

Merman sex? In the hands of Rachel Ingalls, yes yes yes. Mrs. Caliban is her 1983 (newly reissued) short novel about Dorothy, a sad suburban housewife who harbors and falls in love with Larry, a sea creature escaped from a nearby lab. Why so sad? The death of a young son, a miscarriage, an unfaithful