CRP's Blog

We had some technical difficulties on Friday—possibly some green-clad mythological mischievous-makers having a spot of fun?—so our regularly scheduled Staff Reads is being posted today.

Buzz words from this week’s staff reads post: feminism, knitting, Manhattan, and serial commas. Intrigued? Keep reading below to find out more.

Share what you’re reading in the comments or on Twitter using the hashtag #CRPreads

What we’re reading (and wearing) on this fine St. Patrick’s Friday. #crpreads #stpattysday

A post shared by Chicago Review Press (@chicagoreviewpress) on Mar 17, 2017 at 2:11pm PDT

I am currently reading The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae. I just got it from the library yesterday. I saw the pilot episode for Issa Rae’s show Insecure on HBO and had to check out her book. Glamour says “you’ll laugh freakishly hard” on the cover, so I’m looking forward to starting it this weekend. —Olivia Aguilar, publicist

I’ve been listening to the audiobook of The Mothers, and I absolutely panicked when it seemed I wouldn’t get to hear the end because it’s so absorbing. My allotted time on the Overdrive app expired before I finished listening, which necessitated calling the nearest library that had the CDs and reserving the copy before everyone else learned that the book just got optioned for a movie produced by Kerry Washington. I’ve also started working though our backlist with Grandma Gatewood’s Walk. She’s so plucky, and the book is everything I hoped it would be and more. —Ashley Alfirevic, publicity associate

The instant that I read Porochista Khakpour’s write-up about Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad in the Nylon article “31 Women Writers on the Life-Changing Books They Read in Their 20s,” I ordered a copy of Farrokhzad’s collection Remembering the Flight: Twenty Poems. Described as “the most revered feminist of modern Persian letters, an extraordinary filmmaker, and an all-around iconoclast,” she sounded like someone I definitely needed to learn more about. I’m so excited to get to know her work. —Allison Felus, production manager

In anticipation of an annual weekend retreat I take with my knitting group, I’ve been reading a lot of knitting patterns. I have k2tog, k, p, m1r and m1l floating in my head. When not counting stitches, I’ve been listening to A Conjuring of Light, the final book in V. E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic series, as I knit, cook, and commute. And on my bedside table is Heartbreak Hotel, the latest Alex Delaware novel from Jonathan Kellerman. —Mary Kravenas, marketing manager

I’m reading Mary’s favorite book ever: Good Omens. And, of course, it’s amazing. Every sentence is either hilarious or profound or both. And it’s also amazing that whenever I tell Mary what part I’m at she can quote a phrase from that same page. I hope to one day love something as much as Mary loves that book. —Emily Lewis, editorial and marketing assistant

I enjoyed this story that’s been making the rounds about a Maine court case ruling that hinges on a serial comma (or lack of it) in a law. Listen to your editors, authors—serial commas matter! I’ve also been reading Howards End since the dawn of time. The news has been distracting me from recreational reading the last couple of months, but I’ve finally picked up momentum on the book and am almost done. I like it but prefer A Room with a View.  —Lindsey Schauer, project editor

I’m reading Ann Douglas’s miraculous Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. It concatenates so many threads of modernism, from the Lost Generation to the Harlem Renaissance, from Sigmund Freud to Gertrude Stein, from Bert Williams to T. S. Eliot. And while it concentrates mostly on the key players of New York culture in the 1920s, it places them in the context of the eras before and after. Douglas’s apercus are brilliant and come fast, one after another:

The blasphemist needs a God at least as much as the believer does.

 

Blacks imitating and fooling whites, whites imitating and stealing from blacks, blacks reappropriating and transforming what has been stolen, whites making yet another foray on black styles, and on and on: this is American popular culture.

 

The fight between significance present and significance absent is a fixed fight; absence is the victor. But the staged fight is theater. All time is borrowed time, but theater is consciously, deliberately, conspicuously borrowed time.

It’s a huge book and a slow read, but I savor every page.  —Yuval Taylor, senior editor