Poll
This article appears in the November 2007 issue of Chicago Magazine.
Did you like what you read here? Subscribe to Chicago Magazine »
November 21, 2009
52.0F
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Advertisement
November 2007
- November 2007 Table of Contents »
- The Plane Truth »
- Chefs on the Grill - Bob Djahanguiri »
- Will You Be My Friend? »
- Tough Love: Great Chicago Novels »
- Name Game »
- The Biggest Losers »
- The Dream Team »
- Mr. Inside Out »
- 5 Bars' Picks For... »
- Now Circling »
- Old Style »
- Six Degrees of Ken Vandermark »
- Guess Hue? »
- Design Within Her Reach »
- Ritz, on the Rocks »
- Drawing a Crowd »
- Homo Sapiens Barackus »
- 5 Albums that Move... »
- Critical Mass »
- Sales Check »
- Writers on the Record »
- Shopper: Nanette Lepore »
- Wail »
- The Redwalls »
- New Country »
- Conversation With ... Tom Lemming »
- You Should Know ... E. Faye Butler »
- The Blip - November 2007 »
- A Daisy of a House »
- Making History »
- A Chance to Attend Harvard »
- Dining Tidbits »
- Time Tables »
- Eating Clark »
- Singled Out: Bien Trucha »
- Fahrenheit »
- Southern Discomfort »
- Art Imitates Death »
- Starry Nights »
- Aliens »
- How the CIA Enlisted the Chicago Mob to Put a Hit on Castro »
- The New Vice President »
- 124 Best Dishes »
Comments are moderated. We review them in an effort to remove offensive language, commercial messages, and irrelevancies.
Reader Comments:
The Year Diz Came to Town, by Robert Goldsborough
You forgot Stephen Elliott's HAPPY BABY, which details the contemporary seedy underside of Chicago, and--most importantly--the story of homeless/foster children left to fend for themselves in Chicago group homes.
Another book to add to your list, Nella Larsen's PASSING, written by a native who became a figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
I'm not sure how you overlooked Adam Langer's Crossing California (and its follow up, The Washington Story)--they capture West Rogers Park in the late 70s and through the 80s so perfectly. Also, The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger feels like a quintessential Chicago novel to me too (especially for Chicago book lovers, with its scenes set in libraries and bookstores in the Chicago area.) I am a Chicagoan living in California, and all of these books helped me feel happily re-connected to my hometown.
Time Traveler's Wife. I think it's important to select a text that has sold a few copies.
Tough choice from a good list of great novels, but how can Willard Motley's novel, "Knock on Any Door" be excluded? And also, to a lesser extent, his follow-up novel, "Let No Man Write My Epitaph".
The Easy Hour by Leslie Stella or Crossing California by Adam Langer
The Devil in the White City
Time Traveler's Wife might have sold a few copies, but it's not very good.
Devil in the White City is creative non-fiction.
I like this list. It was full of surprises.
Time Traveler's Wife is a great book. Devil in the White City was entertaining. Some of Harry Stephen Keeler's books have great scenes around the city revealing a daily sense of place from the 1920s you don't get from a history book.