Column: For Halloween, 8 books with chills like campfire ghost stories
When I was a kid, every year my friend Tom would have his birthday party in one of Chicagoland's forest preserves. Tom's nickname was "nature boy" and his father was...
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Column: Books vs. Twitter! We are reading more but there’s still room to grow
When Facebook and its associated apps and websites recently went down for the better part of a day, on Twitter I saw a handful of tweets celebrating along the lines...
Column: Abdulrazak Gurnah wins Nobel Prize in Literature, a little-known name for U.S. readers
When the Nobel committee announced Abdulrazak Gurnah as the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, I'm guessing that most of you that heard the news said, "Who?" Gurnah...
Column: ‘Fight Club’ author Chuck Palahniuk is serializing his next book. Will an old way of reading become new again?
A Victorian-era practice is finding new purchase. What goes around comes around, I guess. "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk recently announced that he signed a deal with the Substack newsletter...
Column: Nothing wrong with big, splashy promotions for Sally Rooney’s ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You’
When I purchased my copy of Sally Rooney's "Beautiful World, Where Are You" I was also given a blue #2 pencil embossed with the book's title, and a postcard with...
Column: In the rush of ‘big’ books season, don’t overlook these 5 titles
Fall 2021 is the season of the "big" books. If you're a reader paying attention you've likely been bombarded with news about the new books from major, established authors. I...
Column: ‘Slow books’ is a thing: Novels like ‘Matrix’ are like those meals that take hours
I have only read three chapters of Lauren Groff's new novel, "Matrix" and yet it is already my favorite book of the year. How can this be? I am having...
Column: Giving books for the holidays? The Biblioracle advises, buy them now
Maybe you're like me, and lately you've been hearing a lot about supply chain problems. I think of the supply chain like I think of my pancreas; I spend 99%...
Column: Author and TV showrunner Jim Gavin started a publishing company that so far has published a single book: ‘Shaky Town’
Publishing is a business, governed by profit and loss like any other business. But publishing is not, like, a good business. Some people do manage to get pretty rich in...
Column: There’s pain in junked books — but the Biblioracle explains why
Recently, a picture of a dumpster full of books being discarded by Kelvyn Park High School circulated on social media, generating outrage among some members of the public who couldn't...