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…

Is it me or is it the productions? Two out of the eight plays presented here are old – and those are the ones that resonated with me. Granted, staying power says a lot about a play, a book, a movie. And the themes of these two plays, Greek tragedy…

As I write this blog, snow is whirling around my high-rise – our first real storm of the season. Our high temperature by Saturday will be zero. What a fun time to settle in your comfortable chair with an enjoyable read…

I feel privileged sitting in the small Chicago Greenhouse Theater with an intimate group invited to see the first professional staging of a new play, My Whorizontal Life by Sephe Haven. OK, the title is a giveaway. This is a solo recollection of her life…

So many good books passed through my hands in the last month. Of all, Viktor Frankl’s focus on finding the meaning in your life still resonates. As a result, I was discussing with a friend the meaning of corporal works of mercy (Catholic) and mitzvahs (Jewish) in our lives…