With all the human carnage and cruelty in the world every day, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit how broken up I’ve been over the recent death of Bear--our family dog. A Pit bull. Died unexpectedly at age 10. My oldest daughter broke me th…
The story you’re about to read is true–none of the names have been changed to protect the innocent, though they’re all spelled correctly. I hope... After a grueling day of podcasting, I take a walk to clear my head and think great…
Don’t know what I was doing back in 1999 that kept me from reading My Kitchen Wars. That's the year it came out–a memoir by Betty Fussell, best known as a food writer. So I probably wouldn’t have read it, even if I had heard about …
Around here everyone’s making a big deal out of the fact that the new pope comes from Chicago. Or Dolton–a suburb just south of Chicago. So, close enough... But I have my own personal big deal to make out of Cardinal Robert Francis Prev…
Sad news out of Chicago--the great Mike Miner, writer/edit for the Reader, died the other day. Age 81--natural causes. He had a fascinating life. Navy veteran. Former Sun-Times reporter. Dispatched stories from Saigon at the end of the Vietna…
I have a secret to confess. It has to do with Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor's absolutely fantastic novel that I urge you to read–if you’re not intimidated by long books. And even if you are--c'mon, get over that! It tells the stor…
Gotta give The New York Times credit for devoting a healthy chunk of space to the life and work of Leonard Zeskind, who died the other day of cancer. At age 75--too damn young, as far as I’m concerned. Zeskind’s expertise was the right…
I didn’t think I’d like Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles nearly this much, when I checked it out of the library. Not even sure how I heard about it–probably a mention in The New York Times. Sounded like a fun r…
It was my father, of guy all people, who turned me on to the novels of Kate DiCamillo. This was in the early 00s—the beginning of the end-stretch of his life. By then he'd bought into everything that Kate DiCamillo’s characters fight a…
It's unnecessary, I know, to give more attention to Michael Connelly, whose books are instant best sellers. But I must show some love for his latest, The Waiting. Which had me up all night and into the morning, reading. Yes, I read past midnight. …
To take a break from the political madness of our time, I was reading Maximum Bob, an old Elmore Leonard novel I found in a baby library not far from my home. Classic Leonard. About a bunch of lowlifes in Florida, where lowlifes flourish, who're co…
My dear friend Keith Kelleher is a vintage radical, who’s been on the front lines of just about every cause worth fighting for since I can remember. So I wasn’t surprised to see he’d joined this weekend's march outside of Tesla&rs…
Jackson Park by Charlotte Carter is a run-don’t-walk-to-read novel if you love the following… Riveting mysteries with twist endings… Compelling first-person narratives by likeable characters–-in this case, Cassandra, a 20…
As a kid growing up in the `60s and `70s, I listened to all the hits on my transistor radio as I sat in my bedroom, daydreaming about this, that and the other thing. And of all the voices that came through that radio, the one who sounded the most l…
When President Donnie punished the Associated Press for not obeying his orders, it brought back ancient memories from the `70s, when I began my journalism career at a small newspaper in the suburbs of Connecticut. I was young and naive. My first e…