Books and Literature

One Book One Chicago: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

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One Book, One Chicago's 2014 Selection: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

One Book, One Chicago’s 2014 Selection: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

I discovered One Book, One Chicago in the fall of 2012 when every single person I saw on public transit had their head buried in The Book Thief. I knew it couldn’t be coincidence that the whole city seemed to read the same book at the same time, but I was too new to know the secret. Luckily, a billboard popped up near my office with the One Book, One Chicago logo and The Book Thief cover art. A quick google search later, and I had a favorite Chicago Public Library program. One Book, One Chicago aims to engage the city’s readers in a public discourse on a single book supported by events, blog posts, and small group discussions to help build a culture of reading.

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Made of Books: The Magical Worlds of Dr.Seuss

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Made of Books is a monthly column (partly inspired by hero Roxane Gay) where Christina discusses writing that has been meaningful to her, in one way or another. 

There’s a photo of me when I was three or four reading to my sister, who was a couple years younger than me. This was the only time I wanted to be around her— when I could read to her. Of course I’m not actually reading. I’m too young to know how. But I knew the story of The Cat in the Hat so well I could recite it from memory. I even turned the pages at the right time.

It’s been years since I’ve picked up any Dr. Seuss book, and I was sad to realize there isn’t one anywhere in the four six-foot tall bookshelves in my apartment. I think my sister surreptitiously wrangled them— Cat in the Hat, Fox in Socks, Green Eggs in Ham, Hop on Pop, The Sneetches— out of my parents’s house before I could.

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John Lewis and the Civil Rights Movement in March: Book One

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Pray for Peace

Some of you may have heard of John Lewis, a U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 5th congressional district who—with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and four others—was one of six leaders within civil rights organizations during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. But a lot of younger people may not know his name. Along with Andrew Aydin, Lewis’s Congressional aide, the duo released a graphic novel in 2013 about his fight for racial equality, now stretching over 50 years. While I may not be the first to review this, I thought it relevant to touch upon the importance of John Lewis and his role in a movement that changed the country. [Read more…]

Dave Eggers’s Latest Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is Not Quite That

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Image of Dave EggersNote: I originally had a 1200+ word review of this book written and all set to go…and then it was deleted by WordPress without so much as an auto-save-you-very much. After much pulling of hair and yelling of threats in a neighborhood Starbucks, I attempted a rewrite. This is the aforementioned <shorter> re-write, which hopefully contains 1/100th of the brilliance that the first post had. (I humble myself, sometimes, you must understand…)

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Oceanic Tales: “The Luminaries” and “The Narrow Road to the Deep North”

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The Man Booker Prize, awarded each year to the best English-language novel published by a company based in the United Kingdom, has now achieved a level of prestige comparable to the Pulitzer. By the terms described above, one might expect that most Booker winners would be as thoroughly British as a gaggle of Wodehousian aristocrats sitting down to roast, pudding, and port.

In reality, the Prize has been awarded to writers from around the world since its 1969 inception, and most recently, the last two prizes went to historical novels written by authors from Oceania: The Luminaries, by 28 year-old New Zealander Eleanor Catton (the youngest person to ever win), and The Narrow Road to the Deep North by 53 year-old Australian Richard Flanagan. The combination of a shared setting and two very different perspectives inspired me to pick up both works.

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Christmas with a Twist: David Sedaris’s Holidays on Ice

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Image courtesy of Hachette Book Group

Like most families, mine has many treasured holiday traditions. One of the most sacred is unpacking our fuzzy-haired and completely deranged-looking angel from the 1970s Jack Daniels box in which she resides during the offseason. We then attempt (and usually fail) to reattach the one tiny plastic arm that constantly falls off before we place her atop the tree. My mom and dad bought the angel before I was born, and as homely as she is, I’m pretty sure she’s the only item my siblings and I will fight over when the time comes to divvy up my parents’ things.

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Made of Books: Growing Out of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead

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Image of Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal from The Fountainhead

 

Made of Books is a monthly column (partly inspired by hero Roxane Gay) where Christina discusses writing that has been meaningful to her, in one way or another.

I was 15 when I stumbled across mention of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead in the local paper. I hadn’t heard of the philosophical and romantic tale of Individualism before, but something, I don’t remember what, in that article piqued my interest. I found a tattered copy printed in the 1960s at a used bookstore. It had a romance novel-y image in the lower right: a naked man’s arm is wrapped around the waist of a similarly naked woman, her hand is on his neck, and her face is tilted up, eyes are closed in an expression of pleasure. I bought it for $1.

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Meryl and Christina Discuss Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist

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Meryl and I hung out, ate some soup and drank some wine while talking about Roxane Gay’s kickass essay collection, Bad Feminist. While discussing this book, we fell into many tangents about past relationships and dogs and humor. That’s the awesomeness of the book— it opens up doors and gets you talking.

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Highlights from Amy Poehler’s “Yes Please”

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Cover of "Yes Please"

Yes Please came out October 28. (image via)

I bought this book on Audible on Friday afternoon and finished it Monday night, savoring the last hour at home while cleaning before sitting down to write this review. Listening to Amy Poehler talk about her life, her career, her family and her friends was soothing and inspiring at the same time. She made me want to write but also call my aunt to catch up. (I still owe you a call, Aunt Cary.)

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Made of Books: On Mary Karr’s Lit

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Image of Marry Karr and her memoir, Lit

Made of Books is a monthly column (partly inspired by hero Roxane Gay) where Christina discusses writing that has been meaningful to her, in one way or another. 

I don’t know what compelled me to purchase Lit, Mary Karr’s third memoir, back in 2010. This seriously disappoints me because this book has so profoundly shaped how I think about reading and writing I feel that Lit and me should have some kind of origin story. Instead, I remember curling up on my parents’s sofa, Mary Karr’s sharp humor and gorgeous prose drowning out How I Met Your Mother or the sports my father was watching.

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