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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

The fall Chicago Humanities Festival, since 1989, brings thinkers, dreamers, doers, writers, artists, performers to our city for dozens of events that stretch for more than two weeks. We are in the thick of it. The theme this time is “citizens” and so far I’ve heard about effective altruism from moral ethicist Peter Singer, extreme weather

I’m always reading but I don’t always have time to post a blog about what I’ve read. Travel, work, a massive head cold, my sweet dog’s last days on earth: life. I lapped up Linda Rosenkrantz’ Talk in part because I’d always wanted to do what she achieved. Rosenkrantz recorded conversations with her friends over

I curate the literature listings in Crain’s Chicago Business quarterly Guide to Culture. I feature visits by blockbuster authors, the U.S. poet laureate, scientists, historians. For this list I am always on the lookout for Chicago-based authors. This season I am newly and happily acquainted with three local writers. I read Dave Reidy’s The Voice Over

Do we save “big reads” for summer? More and more, I do. There’s more unbroken time, whether its outside on a cushy chaise in my Chicago backyard or on the dock/at the beach/in the boat at Lac Pythonga. Why more time? Simpler summer food at home and, at Pythonga, all meals come from the club.

I’ve written earlier about reading on a device: sure it’s great for travel (endless titles, one gadget!) but holding a book in hand, in a public place, creates the opportunity for conversation. Earlier this week I was on a city bus midday, going to a doctor’s appointment. I was finishing Harper Lee’s Go Set a

A friend heading to the Galapagos Islands asked my advice for a breezy read, a light but engaging page-turner. Not my kind of read, but I scanned my shelves: Nick Hornby’s Funny Girl, Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, John Kenney’s Truth in Advertising. Not light but certainly engaging, Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply. What is

Summer, and the reading is breezy. First, Jess Walter’s The Financial Lives of the Poets (2009). I was a  fan of his 2013 Beautiful Ruins, so I picked up one of his earlier novels. I’m glad I did. Walter is a deft storyteller; I fall easily into the worlds he creates. Key on that 2009 publication

When I finish a book that I’ve loved reading, my first thought is: Will Mom? My mother, like my son Evan, consumes books as though they are air, necessary for survival. She is always in a book, or five if none of them are pleasing. Unlike me, she’ll read an unlikeable book to its end.

I love a good, long read. The book becomes a part of me, an extension of my arms, I panic when I don’t remember where I’ve set it. At 720 pages, Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life is one of those reads. I carried it around for more than a week, and I loved it —

I am just returned from a week in the Scottsdale, Arizona sun: 90 degrees, dry, mountains, desert, family, swimming, running, reading. It was perfect. A shout out to my mom, at whose home we crashed for a few days — she loved it — before heading to a resort, The Sanctuary at Camelback, in Paradise

The sky is grey, the ground is white, there’s a warming fire in the living room fireplace. Sure, I like a brisk winter walk, to ice skate, to ski. In Chicago, there are many days too cold to go outside for long. So we turn to books. The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace:

Boris Fishman’s A Replacement Life is that rare thing: a newly told Holocaust story. (Do we need even one more? If it’s this, a resounding “yes.”) Aspiring magazine writer Slava Gelman is awakened early on an already hot summer day by his ringing landline, a curiosity. It’s his mother, letting him know that his beloved

Let’s begin with books. I read, and loved, so many.* Most recently, A.M. Homes’ novel May We Be Forgiven, which begins with a series of unforgivable acts: a mindless and deadly car crash, adultery, murder. The only arc could be upwards, yes? Well, no — not in Homes’ New York suburbia. Before we arrive at

Chief among my reasons to visit Montreal was to visit our son Evan, who is finishing up his last semester at McGill University, where he’s studying English literature and history. My friend Janet, whose son is in his second year at McGill, was my co-conspirator. We agreed on an early November visit: cold enough to