Each year in March, during the University of Arizona spring break, a huge volunteer organization takes over the campus and hosts the Tucson Festival of Books (TFoB). This year 135,000 book lovers and around 350 authors immersed themselves in the world of books…

In Part One, I highlighted three long books. Here, there is only one, but an important book, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. If you have a serious reader friend, take up this book together and discuss the sections…

There are three longish books in this first installment of my winter book comments. I finally got my hands on Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. It did not disappoint. The wait list at the library is short because it came out in 2022. Then I saw a new book by Hampton Sides…

Where did October and November go? Disappeared into 11 books, most of them worth considering for your book stack. Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

It’s raining and warm, yes warm, in Chicago this first week of November. Does this mean that the coming winter will be as warm as last year? I never wore my sub-zero coat. Regardless of the weather, books keep us venturing into other worlds. The following books…

A current best-seller – interesting book about nurses in Vietnam. Hannah does an excellent job of spinning a plot around three nurses who bond in the triage centers and then follow each other’s lives post-war. The Army claimed there were never…

Get thee behind me summer! In the U.S. we’ve been bombarded by political conventions, extreme heat, and lots of big, fat books. It’s 93° in Chicago as of this writing, but I’m off to the Inside Passage on Thursday for my first visit to Alaska. Rain and 50° are promised…

Many of us read; some have eclectic tastes. If you’re always open to exploring less-known titles, here’s a list to peruse. Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart My husband and I listened to Shteyngart’s best seller Super Sad True Love Story. He loved it. Me, not so much. That’s how I felt about Our Country […]

Chicago theaters spent the last three years making up for by-passing plays written by people of color. Perhaps we’ve reached some sort of balance in 2024 – plays represented a mélange of colors, all of them interesting…

What a variety of books occupied me this winter in Chicago. Fortunately, I found lots of fun, quick reads. They make the darker, deeper stories possible to complete. In early March, I visited the Tucson Festival of Books. It’s informative to hear the popular…