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Showing posts with the label Chicago

THE HOUSE on MANGO STREET (audiobook) by Sandra Cisneros

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Originally Published in 1983. Read by the author, Sandra Cisneros. Duration: 2 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged The House on Mango Street is the story of a Hispanic girl named Esperanza who grows up in a little house in a poor neighborhood in Chicago. Her story is told in a series of unrelated vignettes (44 in all) that tell some sort of story about her family life or the neighborhood itself. In some, the main character clearly has no idea of the more adult themes that occur around her, while in others she is very astute and understands the larger implications.  At first, Esperanza's family intends that the house is going to be a temporary stop on their climb towards economic success in America. But, they never quite are able to move out of this troubled neighborhood and the reader is able to see how the neighborhood affects the lives of everyone around Esperanza as she grows up. To be fair, the neighborhood is not all bad, but it is a tough place for children to grow up and keep the

AN ABUNDANCE of KATHERINES (audiobook) by John Green

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  Originally published in 2006. Published by Listening Library in 2019. Read by Jeff Woodman. Duration: 6 hours, 47 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Colin Singleton is a child prodigy who has recently stopped being a child. He has graduated from high school, is preparing to go to a great college but he is unsettled by a couple of things. Number one: being a child prodigy means that you are potentially an important adult. Colin is aware that it is now time for potential to turn into something - anything - meaningful. Number two: Colin just got dumped - again. He has dated 19 different girls and all are named Katherine. Technically it is 18 different girls because Katherine 1 is also Katherine 19, but the point is pretty much the same. So, Colin is wallowing in self-pity when his best friend, a slacker named Hassan, comes to him and suggests that they need to go on a road trip. They head south through Indiana and eventually end up in Gutshot, Tennessee where Colin meets a girl named Lindse

THE AMERICAN DREAM? A JOURNEY on ROUTE 66 DISCOVERING DINOSAUR STATUES, MUFFLER MEN, and the PERFECT BURRITO: A GRAPHIC MEMOIR by Shing Yin Khor

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  Published in 2019 by Zest Books. Illustrated by the author, Shing Yin Khor. In another recent review I wrote this: I have a real weakness for oddball travel books. I have read a memoir about a man that hitchhiked throughout Europe and North Africa, a book about a man's bicycle trip from the UK to India, a book about a man who walked across Afghanistan, a book about a man who rode a motorcycle around the edges of Afghanistan, a book about two women who biked from Turkey to China, a book about a man who walked the length of the Nile, a man who walked the Appalachian Trail with his deeply irresponsible friend from high school...and more. And more. And more. This book continues that tradition with a twist - it is done in comic book style. Usually, this is called a graphic novel, but this book is not a novel because it is not fiction. The author calls it a "graphic memoir." Illustration from the back cover The author/illustrator is an immigrant from Malaysia. She came over

THE FIRE NEXT TIME (audiobook) by James Baldwin

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  Published in 2008 by Blackstone Audio. Originally published in 1963. Read by Jesse L. Martin. Duration: 2 hours, 45 minutes. Unabridged. James Baldwin (1924-1987) was an African-American essayist, playwright, poet and novelist. This book is a collection of two lengthy essays on race and religion in the United States. The book comes from a line from the song Mary Don't You Weep : God gave Noah the rainbow sign No more water, the fire next time. The first essay is in the format of a letter to his nephew entitled " My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation ."  As suggested by the title, it is about America's ugly racial history, including incidents from Baldwin's life. The second, longer essay is " Down at the Cross: A Region in my Mind. " This is a discussion of religion in America, including how Christianity had been warped into a tool to prop up a social structure that kept whites on top and blacks on th

GANGSTERS vs. NAZIS: HOW JEWISH MOBSTERS BATTLED NAZIS in WARTIME AMERICA (audiobook) by Michael Benson

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  Highly Recommended Published in 2022 by Tantor Audio. Read by Gabriel Vaughan. Duration: 8 hours, 53 minutes. Unabridged. Flag of the German American Bund In the United States in the 1930's there was a small, loud, enthusiastic, and growing group of Americans that were great fans of Hitler and the Nazi party. They were largely ethnic Germans and formed organizations that sported Nazi symbols and mimicked the big rallies that Hitler had in Germany. They also mimicked the overt antisemitic speech exhibited by the Nazis. The most successful of these was the German American Bund (German American Federation). There were a lot of small groups but there were two larger organizations with a different take than the Bund. The Silver Legion of America  (Silver Shirts) had a spiritualist take on hate. Father Coughlin  was a literal Catholic priest who brought a "Catholic" view on antisemitic hate and anti-interventionism from Detroit. He had a massive radio audience that was so en

WILDLAND: THE MAKING of AMERICA'S FURY (audiobook) by Evan Osnos

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  Published in September of 2021 by Macmillan Audio. Read by the author, Evan Osnos. Duration: 17 hours, 7 minutes. Unabridged. Evan Osnos is a reporter for The New Yorker . He was inspired to write about the phenomenon of Donald Trump and the 2016 and 2020 elections when he returned from an multi-year assignment in China and noted that politics, journalism and even economics in the United States had changed. He didn't use this analogy, but I will: Parents don't notice their kids changing and growing because they see them every day. But, the aunts and uncles who only see them at the holidays can easily detect the changes. Osnos went to three places that he used to live to investigate: Greenwich, Connecticut; Chicago, Illinois; and Clarksburg, West Virginia.  In West Virginia, he primarily looks at the changes in journalism such as the loss of local news and small town newspapers. He also looks at government pulling back environmental regulations and business avoiding responsibi

AN AMERICAN SUMMER: LOVE and DEATH in CHICAGO (audiobook) by Alex Kotlowitz

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Published in March of 2019 by Random House Audio. Read by by the author, Alex Kotlowitz. Duration: 9 hours, 53 minutes. Unabridged. Journalist Alex Kotlowitz has written several books about race, crime and life in the Midwest rust belt. This book focuses on Chicago's most violent neighborhoods. How violent are they? In the past 20 years, 14,033 people have been killed and another 60,000 have been injured by other people shooting guns. Just to compare, it is as if the entire population of Scranton, PA or Ogden, UT or Napa, CA were all killed or wounded by gunfire. But, it's not like all of Chicago experiences this violence. It is really just a few neighborhoods - so the impact is a lot like a civil war is going on in a medium-sized city. Everyone knows someone who has been shot and most people know someone that has been killed. That takes a toll on the survivors and that is what this book is about.  Kotlowitz follows nine stories from these neighborhoods. Some were vict

THE BROTHERHOOD (PRECINCT 11 #1) by Jerry B. Jenkins

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Published by christianaudio.com in 2011. Read by Johnny Heller. Duration: 9 hours, 8 minutes. Unabridged. Boone Drake is a young Chicago cop who seemingly has it all. He is married to his beautiful high school sweetheart. They have a healthy toddler son. His career is on the fast track. His family attends a big church and he helps run the athletic program. But, a horrific home fire destroys this idyllic life. Jack loses his family and his faith as he slowly recovers. As Jack slowly rebuilds his personal life, will he still be able to move forward in his career? ************Caution: spoilers*********** This book is all about world building for the other two books in the series. We meet Drake and set up his tragic backstory. Sadly, the tragedy dominates the book. The descriptions of how his family died are quite graphic and go on for quite a while (there is an extensive hospital scene). It verges on the level of being grief porn. It just goes on and on and on. The actual police

MAKE ME (Jack Reacher #20) (audiobook) by Lee Child

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Published in 2015 by Random House Audio. Read by Dick Hill. Duration: 14 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. Photo by DWD This is the 20th novel-length entry in the Jack Reacher series. But, readers of the series know that the books are not written in any particular order and there are a lot of short stories and novellas in the series as well. If you are trying to read everything in chronological order (from Reacher's point of view), this is entry number 37. In the middle of the night, Jack Reacher gets off of a train bound for Chicago in an small town in Oklahoma named Mother's Rest. Yes, Mother's Rest. And, no, no one seems to know why it is named that. He is immediately met by a former FBI agent turned private detective named Michelle Chang. She had initially confused him for an associate of hers that has gone missing in Mother's Rest. Reacher is intrigued by the situation (and the fact that no one in town seems to have any idea where the name came from) and starts

ONE SUMMER: AMERICA, 1927 (audiobook) by Bill Bryson

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Published by Random House Audio in 2013. Read by the author, Bill Bryson. Duration: 17 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. Boxing champ Jack Dempsey (1895-1983) Bill Bryson's  One Summer: America, 1927  is an immensely interesting book, as would any book that featured Charles Lindbergh, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Sacco and Vanzetti, Jack Dempsey, Gutzon Borglum, Charles Ponzi, Al Capone, Al Jolson, Zane Grey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Henry Ford, several Hollywood stars and more. The book starts out with the story of Charles Lindbergh and the other flyers that were attempting to cross the Atlantic in a non-stop flight to claim the $25,000 Orteig Prize. Bryson moves on to tell the stories of the other people I named above - often cleverly lacing them together with the story of Charles Lindbergh. We learn about baseball, boxing, Hollywood (there's a hilarious story about Jack Dempsey with a starlet), the beginnings of "talkies" and the mov

ALL the DREAMS WE'VE DREAMED: A STORY of HOOPS and HANDGUNS on CHICAGO'S WEST SIDE (audiobook) by Rus Bradburd

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Published in 2018 by Blackstone Audio. Read by Donald Corren. Duration: 8 hours, 38 minutes. Unabridged. Rus Bradburd's All the Dreams We've Dreamed is both a complicated story and a simple story of two Chicago men whose lives have revolved around the game of basketball. It's a story of a coach and a player.  It's a story of connections between people and also a story of bureaucratic neglect.  It's a story of remorse and shame and a story of pride of place and love for one's teammates and players. It's a story of love and a story of catastrophic violence. Mostly, because it is set in the free fire gun zone of Chicago's West Side, it is a tragedy. The book centers on Marshall High School and its basketball program. Perhaps you have heard about the wave of gun violence that has swept through Chicago's South and West sides, earning it the nickname "Chi-raq" because it is reminiscent of Iraq during the bad old days of The Surge at t

TETTERBAUM'S TRUTH (Just Call Me Angel #1) by S.R. Claridge

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Published in 2010 by Global Publishing Group. 298 pages. Chicago. Photo by Allen McGregor. This book was introduced to me as being similar to Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. For those not familiar with this ever-growing series, Stephanie is the classic "fish out of water" - she is a gorgeous, unemployed single woman who takes a job as a bounty hunter for a bail bondsman. If she brings them in, she gets paid. But, she's never used a gun. She has no skills to do this job but, in the end, she does so in her own hilarious way. On the surface, this book does indeed have some similarities with the Stephanie Plum series. Angel Martin is a single woman who owns a bar in Chicago called Tetterbaum's Pub. She's invested her life savings in it and it's working. Her love life is a mess since her fiance dumped her and disappeared but she does have a good time with the mysterious Grayson. It's not serious but it is seriously physical. Her only livin