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Our place in Quebec is my place to read, on the dock, in the boat, in our newly furnished living space, in a big oversized chair and ottoman in the reading loft designed for me. Unbroken hours, and quiet. No tv, no telephone, no cell, no Internet. Someone else does the cooking. Bliss. There I

I read all the time, but I read most during the summer: beside the pool, on the dock, in my leafy green Chicago back yard. Here’s some recent reads I enjoyed. Ah, summer. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan I live beside Lake Michigan and the sight of its limitless waters astonishes me

My college-bound daughter and I visited New Orleans last week (sunny, dry, breezy, 70‘s) for another look at Tulane University and to visit family. We stayed near campus, at the Hilton Hampton Inn on St. Charles Street in a spacious top-floor room. The hotel offers free breakfast and afternoon tea; its common and pool areas

I’m still in a funk over our elected leader and his mendacious staff. Fiction, even dark difficult fiction, provides an escape. Here’s where I’ve been: In the Midwest, two men heedlessly press on to their deaths. One is a right-to-life activist set on eliminating abortion providers. The other is a doctor who provides abortions for

In these unsettling times, my reader friends tell me they’re reaching for fun or light or soothing reads. A comfort, for me, is a big read. Below, a few that have taken me far far away from CNN, my Facebook feed, the daily papers. I loved C.E. Morgan’s All the Living and looked forward to

Three friends and I headed to Washington, D.C. mid January to be a part of the Women’s March. I have a fear of crowds, but I had to do “something” about DT’s presidency. Shortly after the election, my dearest friends found a hotel room in Du Pont Circle and reasonable air fares to D.C. In

A very satisfying year in books. Below, my favorite reads. The Association of Small Bombs, by Karan Mahajan Characters linked by the devastation of a bomb set in a crowded marketplace. They grow up and old in surprising, unsettling ways.     Christodora, by Tim Murphy A sprawling read set in lower Manhattan, 1970’s to

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

Most recently I read and enjoyed Ian McEwan’s Nutshell, a modern Hamlet narrated by a full-term fetus. Trudy, the pregnant mother, has dismissed her poet husband John from his childhood home, a crumbling mansion in a fashionable part of London. Taking his place? His brother Claude. Together, Trudy and Claude conspire to murder John Cairncross,

I am just returned from my favorite reading spot, our home on Lac Pythonga, where I sit with a book on the dock or the beach or stretch out on our new couch and/or reading chair with ottoman (thank you, Georgia Dent) — quiet spaces all. What a treat: to read for hours at a

The college tour continued, in New York, where we stayed in Union Square with my sister Mary Beth (thank you) and visited two of Columbia University’s undergraduate colleges: Columbia College and Barnard College. Each deserves a day, and that’s how we toured. We were in Morningside Heights, so we visited the magnificent Cathedral of St.

Ah, summer. Some readers head to fluff, others head to big, long, challenging reads because summer offers unbroken stretches and quiet at the beach, by the pool, on a dock. Here are three deep reads I can recommend. Jon Krakauer’s Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (2015). Krakauer is the ace

  We took our daughter Alex on a college tour that began in Berkeley and ended in New Orleans, with stops in between in Austin and Houston. Along with the touring, we did a lot of good eating. Here’s a report. Our host in Berkeley did all the cooking (thank you, Carl!) so I have

Two weeks of planes, trains and automobiles gave me plenty of time to read. Here’s what I liked: My sister Liza works in medicine and had two copies of Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm and so gave me one. Marsh is a British neurosurgeon and a very good storyteller. He brought me inside the heads

Expanding on what they do best, the Chicago Humanities Festival will present a themed four-day event this spring, their first ever. (April 28 – May 1.) The subject is style. Headliners include fashion icon Iris Apfel, media entrepreneur Arianna Huffington, Washington Post fashion editor Robin Givhan, Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza, photographer Sally Mann,

With two weekend trips that involved air travel and a week in bed with a respiratory flu, I read a lot. Here goes: Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air is a seamless memoir of a young neurosurgeon’s last year. Woven into his dire situation is the story of his life: a happy, active Arizona childhood,

Happy New Year! I’ve been on a book binge, and have good things to report. First, Mary Gaitskill’s wondrous novel, The Mare. Ginger is a failed painter, a recovered alcoholic, the survivor of abuse. Now married and living in the country, she yearns to be a mother. Husband Paul is a father, of a college-age

New to my Old Town neighborhood is The Blanchard, a French restaurant I return to again and again. Odd, because the menu is heavily skewed towards meat, and while I eat it, I’m more a fish and greens person. Four kinds of foie gras are served nightly (again, not my thing) but for me there’s a perfectly composed

Easy travel to and from Santa Fe over Thanksgiving gave me unbroken time to read. Indeed, I was so consumed by Barbara Comyn’s Our Spoons Came from Woolworths that the return trip passed in a flash because I gobbled its 196 pages whole. First published in 1950 and recently reissued by New York Review of

My friend Jennifer Miller and I share a love of deep reading. Big long books that we read closely, over a week, so intimate they become part of us. Think Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, Jonathan Franzen’s Purity, most Tom Wolfe, any Dickens’. We both loved Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, which was nominated for the