The first sentence in this book is just a little list of the fun and pretty things that a little girl likes, and the first thing on the list is candy buttons. Then before you know it, you’re immersed in the grind of hand-to-mouth existence, the dreariness of urban living without respite, and the yearning for experiences that are not in the world’s plans for this little girl. That’s how the whole book goes – it reads so easily and feels so light, but feelings and understandings sneak up on you the whole time. Somehow, Brooks squeezes moment after moment of real human intensity into less than 200 pages without making the story dense or heavy. She conveys the complex and subtle truth of one person, Maud Martha Brown, from childhood to motherhood. Maud Martha grapples with issues of race, between white and Black people as well as within the Black community, with gender relations, family systems, and class issues, but you never feel that you’re reading a treatise, or that the character is a device for conveying the author’s ideas. Instead, you feel that you’re right there with Maud Martha, watching all these things and more as her life moves among them. Brooks is sharp, in all senses of that word; Maud Martha is almost as perceptive as her author but much more forgiving. The result is an honest but gentle book about Chicago and its innumerable convoluted foibles, but also about one single straightforward person.

I generally mark everything I “consume” as being worth it, because if it wasn’t I wouldn’t finish it. That said, this was a tough one to swallow. Algren was clearly angry and bitter and seemed to have pretty much given up on Chicago by the time he wrote this. He spends most of the book detailing how clout, corruption, and greed have shaped the city from day one, but I couldn’t even understand a lot of it because at least every other sentence refers to some person, event, or scandal that might have been familiar to people in his time, or historians, but means nothing to me. Having the annotated version helped with this, but it was still slow reading.

On the other hand, Algren obviously loved the people of the city, although he might not have had much faith in their ability to ever make good. This is the essay where he gave us this immortal and beautiful line:

“Once you’ve come to be a part of this particular patch, you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.”

(This is the inspiration for the title of Never a City So Real.)

I enjoyed the stories of the wacky Chicago characters the best. Many of these are referred to only in passing by Algren, but are fully explained in the annotations. Just one tidbit: Streeterville is named after “Cap” Streeter, who parked his boat offshore and claimed a sort of island, which had been created by landfilling in the lake, as an independent province. He refused to pay taxes, and the city took him to court. There were also gun battles in the area as he held off law enforcement. Eventually, Chicago won, but a neighborhood near all these shenanigans still has Cap Streeter’s name.

Reading this has definitely led me to look at my new home differently. This city has a hell of a lot of heart . . . but how about a soul?

with no nasty aftertaste, and very few calories. I read it because I’m going to a book club that’s using it this month, but otherwise I probably wouldn’t have. It’s full of name-dropping and it’s basically a guy who was born just a little too late to enjoy the heyday of Chicago journalism, so he has just learned all about it and loves to tell the stories. He tells them so affectionately, though, that it made me feel appreciative and connected to my new city.

Ironically, the day after I finished this, I was sitting on a CTA bus, and heard someone behind me telling her friend about how she and her boyfriend went to the Billy Goat Tavern the night before. She said it was “modeled after” the old SNL skit where they yell “Cheezborger! Cheezborger!” Yes, she thinks the bar is based on the show.

Oy, vey.

This is not a very substantial book, which is surprising from Kotlowitz. But basically, it’s just a sweet, loving look at Chicago and all its madness. There’s a lot of social justice related stuff in here, which is what you’d expect from him, but it’s mostly just touched on lightly. There’s no real passion in this book, but there’s a lot of affection. He loves Chicago, obviously, even though he’s well aware of its many downsides.

One thing this book is great for is ideas for where to go and what to read next. As a Chicago newbie, I found it a helpful intro/overview, with a social issues angle that I appreciate.

I might actually get my own copy of it, just for reference.

I love this book, and it’s clearly a “quick read” – normally it would be an afternoon or two of dedicated reading. The chapters have little snippets of history in them, but mainly they stay light and friendly. It’s making me feel very happy to be in Chicago, for the most part.

But it’s taking a loooong time to read it, because these days I do almost all my reading on the CTA, and I don’t want to carry this book around with me. My boss lent it to me, and it’s an autographed copy. So I have to be veerrrryyy careful, and just read it in quick 15-minute sessions at home.

(All Consuming says that I started consuming this item less than a minute before writing this post, but that’s just when I clicked on it. I actually started reading it weeks ago.)

I’m on hiatus right now . . . it was just too much information, and I couldn’t absorb it all. I love this book, but I’ll need to finish after a break. I’m reading some other, funner books in the meantime.

This book was a little personal for me, being by Carl Sandburg. I came to Chicago from Asheville, Chicago, where Sandburg spent his later years. In fact, I thought he was from there, until I came here. So I’m sort of tracing his steps in reverse. Hopefully this own’t mean that I end up sleeping in a rail car like he did as a youth.

Anyway, this book is really interesting because it’s a collection of newspaper articles Sandburg wrote about race issues in Chicago during the spring/summer of 1919. It was started before the riots, when there had already been riots in other cities, and race relations were on a lot of people’s minds. As fate would have it, the riots broke out as Sandburg was wrapping up his series. There’s no mention of the riots in the articles, but it’s a fascinating snapshot of the city just before things went crazy.