The Awful Possibilities is the car accident that you can’t tear your eyes from as you drive by it on the free way. It’s the horror movie you started watching and now, damn it, you have to finish. It’s the unsettling chunk of story you overhear on the train that fills the rest of your day with wondering about what in the hell those few, truncated utterances could have meant.

It’s bizarre, weighty, and abstract–at times, even grotesque.

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oetry–sadly the bastard child of the publishing industry these days–has a place close to my heart. As a longtime poet (since 2nd grade!) and an MA degree holder in English literature with a specialization in poetry, I feel qualified to adjudicate a book on the study and appreciation of the art. In addition to reading lots of poetry (most recently in the form of Poetry Magazine), I’ve also read quite a few books on the study of poetry and poetry scholarship–and usually, they’re all pretty terrible.

Normally, when I read a book about poetry, rather than a book of poems, it’s bad. It’s always way too teachy, too middle-school-humanities class, too–dare I say it–boring. I’ve always loved poetry, but I’ve rarely even liked reading books about poetry. Thankfully, Chicago publisher Rose Metal Press’ new book Field Guide to Prose Poetry is unlike most other books in this vein in that it’s good, very good.

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ragic and inspiring, the story of fifteen-year-old Hadiya living and blogging in Mosul, Iraq is presented in print form by Haymarket Books, Chicago’s own progressive and nonprofit book publisher.  IraqiGirl is a series of edited—for grammar—blog posts from Hadiya as she attempts to make sense of what is happening in native country.   As an American reader, I was intrigued to read the details of her and her family’s lives as they attempted to live in a war torn country.

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found a copy of The Shortpants Observer, issue number one, on the free table at Quimby’s (glorious) Free Comic Book Day table.  I devoured the whole issue that day and loved it.  Published by Short Pants Press, an independent Chicago publisher focused on comics and graphic work of all kinds, this journal is a small compilation of the work of several Chicago comic artists.

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’ve never owned a car, and I can happily say that being carless in Chicago has been a much easier experience than anywhere else I’ve lived.  For this reason, I was delighted to find a copy of Carless in Chicago by Jason Rothstein, published by Chicago publisher Lake Claremont Press, on my doorstep.  If you’re currently carless or thinking about giving up your car for good, this book will prove to be an invaluable resource for getting around in Chicago.

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Chicago author Colleen Taylor Sen’s Curry: A Global History is a wonderful examination of curry throughout the ages. Full of pictures, the book details the history of curry as it spread throughout the world. The book also features several curry recipes, both old and new. Intrigued, I set off to recreate the book’s recipe for Malaysian Nonya-style Chicken Curry. The result was quite a success. More pictures from my culinary adventure after the jump.

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ancy Friday’s Beyond My Control is a follow-up to her groundbreaking 1973 book My Secret Garden, which detailed real women’s sexual fantasies that they had shared with the author through letters and video-recorded interviews. My Secret Garden was a groundbreaking book at the time, though today you might find an average issue of Cosmopolitan to be more risqué. Its depictions of female sexual fantasies, which included rape, lesbian sex, and extremely explicit and specific desires, served to prove both that women have fantasies, and that their fantasies are just as colorful, intricate, and transgressive as male sexual fantasies. As mundane as this idea may appear today, it was both liberating and eye-opening at the time of its debut. Thirty years after its publication, Beyond My Control picks up where it left off.

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verything about this book gets it right. Salmon in the Trees is a beautifully produced book of award-winning nature photography by native Chicagoan Amy Gulick that depicts life in the Tongass Rain Forest in Alaska. As a coffee table book, an act of conservation, and a work of art, this book hits the mark every time. In addition, last night I was lucky enough to attend an event at the Betty Notebeart Nature Museum promoting the book. Gulick gave a talk about her experience in the rain forest and shared many of her photos in large format. She was also joined by the Alaska Wilderness League, who, along with Gulick, pushed for conservation of the Tongass Rain Forest.

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ou know, I really should mention the fact that Poetry Magazine is the bee’s fucking knees more often on this site.  Every month it reminds me why I love to read poetry, and makes me feel guilty for not spending more of my time writing it.

This month’s issue is particularly good, featuring the work of D.H. Tracy–his poem “You can tell by the way he slices the cantaloupe” is hilarious and hauntingly truthful–Hester Knibbe, and this year’s Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winner Eleanor Ross Taylor.  I hadn’t read her work before poring through this issue, and it is quite, quite good.  It’s like Wallace Stevens mixed with Kay Ryan–moving, focused on the undercurrents of living, precise.  Free of excess.

The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, if you’re curious, is awarded annually to an American poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition.  That extraordinary recognition comes with a $100,000 cash prize.  I told my boyfriend this prize amount and he responded “well why don’t you win it, then?”  My response: “Oh yeah.  I’ll get right on that.”

ear Ms. Lisa Riebe,

I hate to do this.  You were so nice when I met you at the Chicago Artist’s Expo a few months ago. I do appreciate that you gave me a signed copy of your new children’s book, Pond Punkies, for review. However, I read the first chapter of your book and found that it contained ten glaring grammatical errors in the same number of pages, and this, coupled with the many research errors I also found in the first ten pages, compelled me to stop reading your book.

I’m afraid I will not recommend that anyone read it. I am a reviewer, not a copy editor, and I simply cannot recommend that children read a book that might leave them thinking that “all to familiar” is grammatically correct or that there is no difference between past and past perfect tense. Perhaps I’m being picky, and perhaps this is because of the sheer number of proofreaders I know who can’t find work, but I think that using proper grammar is a cornerstone in the foundation of good writing. You can’t write the next Phantom Tollbooth if you can’t integrate a subject into a sentence properly.

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Radiohead and Philosophy is part of the “Pop Culture and Philosophy” series by local publisher Open Court Books. This series sets up two conditions within which one reads the book. First, the book is a collection of academic-style essays on a range of topics that connect philosophical study with the music, production, and themes of the band. Second, like other titles in this series, the book seems to be either a scheme to cash-in on a captive niche or a vehicle to introduce philosophy to a tightly focused segment that may be plied by a familiar passion. How one is able to reconcile the consequences of these conditions will determine how the book is received.
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recently caught wind of a rumor floating around the Chicago literary community that Granta 108: Chicago was the British literary journal’s highest selling issue of all time. I spoke with Patrick Ryan of Granta to confirm this fact. “I don’t have the numbers,” he said, “but, yes, it was our highest selling issue ever. We’re very happy about it, as you can imagine.”

The Chicago literary community is very happy about it too. The extremely high sales of this issue of Granta, focusing specifically on Chicago authors and essays about Chicago, signifies both that our writers are well renowned and respected in the literary community, and that the literary community in Chicago is booming.

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hen I was a kid, we had these yellow plates that my dad loved.  They had a small, inner circle of white containing two crossed wheat stalks at their centers, but other than that, the plates were this solid, worn-looking pale yellow hue.  They might have been relics from an old garage sale, or maybe they were the survivors from a Kmart set he bought in undergrad; there were only two or three of them in all.

One night when washing dishes my brother dropped one of these plates and chipped a fingernail-sized crescent of ceramic (or whatever they were made of) off of the plate’s edge.  It was aesthetically ruined, if still functional.  We couldn’t use it when company came over.  In fact, no one really used it at all after that except my dad, who–due to the its worn, warm, good-find-at-a-salvation-army quality–couldn’t bear to throw it out.

It’s the memory of washing that dish–beloved, broken–and running my fingers over the chip that haunted me while I read Chicago author Gillian Flynn’s Great Lakes Book Award nominated novel Dark Places.
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his book isn’t necessarily as stuffy as its title and premise make it out to be. It is, however, erudite throughout, even as it meanders away from what might be considered the thesis down long diatribes about interesting, if only-connected-by-gossamer-threads, side topics. It’s an unusual and intriguing ride, and one bolstered by the author’s unique voice. Honestly, even at the pace with which I coast through a book, I often end up feeling as though I wasted the effort of flicking my eyes from left to right across the page of one as dense as this one–but not so with this particular offering. If you have any interest in the topic at all, the intriguing voice of the author will cart you through the book as long as you’re open to some divergence in motif.

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‘ve decided to keep this simple.

The Good: If you are pregnant, planning on becoming pregnant, or just interested in pregnant fashion and you’re looking for a book that will cover all the basics of “preggo-chic,” you’ve found it. This book is packed with fashionable sketches, many from leading designers such as Nicole Miller, Donna Karan, Milly, Diane von Furstenberg, and Isaac Mizrahi. Honestly, even as a non-pregnant woman (and a never-in-a-million-years-planning-to-be-pregnant woman) I found a lot of the outfits cute and trendy. If you want to remain an A-list stylista while your waistline expands, you will seriously enjoy this book.

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ndrea Syrtash managed to make me enjoy reading her book, even if it wasn’t really saying anything original. The sad truth that many self-help authors must face is that there is a limit to the amount of advice one can dispense about dating: after a certain point, every point becomes a vehicle for telling the reader to have confidence, to not lose faith that there is someone out there worth finding.

But like I said, I didn’t mind the monotony. Being a lover of the self-help genre, I’ve basically heard it all at this point (and not just about dating). Syrtash’s writing was fresh, clear, and—thank the fucking Lord—grammatically correct, so reading this book felt less like an exercise and more like a nice chat with a friend.

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‘m afraid I’m turning into somewhat of a Debbie Downer around here these days, but I can’t help but share my honest opinion of Chicago author Robyn Okrant’s Living Oprah: I don’t really like it. Normally, on this site, you’ll notice that my dislike tends to be a bit more emphatic, but honestly, moderate dislike fits the tone of this book perfectly.

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A Bump in the Road is an easy and entertaining read. It follows Clare Finnegan, who works at an event planning firm in Chicago, and also has her own blog, in which she keeps her readers updated on the everyday happenings in her life as she unexpectedly finds out she is pregnant. This forces Clare and her husband to completely change their newlywed partying lifestyle for a more child friendly one, which takes just about nine whole months for them to do. The book progresses via a timeline as opposed to chapters, where the time is not just kept track of by days, but hour by hour as well. This seems to give the reader a more personal connection to Clare’s character, and makes it easier to relate to her. For example, we all have that night where we know we shouldn’t go out because we’ll end up spending an unnecessarily large amount of money on drinks and cab rides, in addition to looking and feeling like crap the next morning when we actually have important things to do, but we end up going out anyway against our better judgment, which is something Clare is quite accustomed to:

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