1.18.2017

Literary Chicago: Jeanette Winterson - "Gut Symmetries"

"When Mama and I left for Berlin, Jove was about to go to Chicago to study. He was nineteen, a dark teenage hero to a girl in old-fashioned clothes and dreaming about James Dean." (pg 126)

Like in many works of fiction, Winterson's characters go to school in Chicago. While this reference is as vague as Jhumpa Lahiri's Chicago school reference, the context implies the school to be the University of Chicago (see Tender is the Night) although Alaa Al Aswany's Chicago is primarily set in UIC. I don't think I've read any fiction that pays much attention to DePaul or Northwestern though I'm sure it's out there. Any fiction about Chicago State? My alma mater Columbia College? Northeastern? I'm curious...

1.02.2017

2016: The Year in Reading

Five Two. Fifty-two. LII. For each week of the year, I read a book. This has been a goal of mine for the past few years and I finally achieved it.

Of course, this is an arbitrary number. Does it mean I read more than in previous years? What about the average length of books? Consider Saramago and the works of poetry I read. Do I need to count pages? Number of words? But this isn't about nit-picking. It's about setting a goal and reaching it.

I like this reading goal in that it forces me to read wildly and without precision. I can read a wider range of works when I force myself to read 52 books. Having this goal in mind means I read more short poetry works and more works of flash fiction and short story collections. I read more non-fiction this year than I've ever read before. I found that sometimes books had to resonate with how I was feeling at the time. Like Lewis's It Can't Happen Here after Trump won the election or finally reading in the Spring Tender Is the Night, which I had purchased at a book fair over five years ago. Some books I couldn't wait to start as soon as I bought them like Known and Strange Things or Speedboat (although I couldn't get into it at first, it really grew on me).

The White Album, complete with front cover falling off, I found at the Logan Square Arts Fest, the same warm day I listened to Ryley Walker and Bill MacKay and found a reissue of the Beastie Boys first EP on on vinyl. Open Books, where I volunteer, provided many serendipitous findings as well, including Road-Side Dog and Written on the Body. Some books I special ordered, like the poetry collection by Danez Smith after I read a poem of his on Buzzfeed of all places.