On one hand, anything that gets people into books is A-OK with me, and each of these women has a monthly megaphone that moves hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of books.

On the other hand, these clubs soak up a lot of the available oxygen when it comes to broad, cultural coverage of books, so when they choose books that are not going to lack for attention (such as Oprah Winfrey choosing a memoir by Beyoncé’s mom and Reese Witherspoon going with mega-selling author Emily Henry’s latest), it feels like a missed opportunity.

However, I have just been introduced to a celebrity book club for which I can declare my full enthusiasm, the Service95 Book Club of pop superstar Dua Lipa, which named Max Porter’s “Grief Is the Thing with Feathers” as its monthly read for April.

I will be honest. Dua Lipa is a name I’ve heard but I could not name any of her songs. I believe she is known for her “bangers,” to use a word that people who know Dua Lipa’s music probably don’t deploy anymore. That said, shuffling through an Apple Music playlist, there were several songs that had clearly passed across my personal radar, including a remix of “Cold Heart” featuring Elton John that blends in John’s classic “Rocket Man,” a song that I could sing every lyric to.

I do know “Grief Is the Thing with Feathers,” a book first published in the U.S. by indie publisher Greywolf in 2016. A slim, strange, 128-page marvel, “Grief Is the Thing with Feathers” is a powerful meditation that manages to capture the strange whipsaws of emotion that accompany a great loss.

It is an idiosyncratic choice because of the book’s nature, and the fact that it came out a decade ago. The big book clubs seek to make their monthly titles a capital-E event. Dua Lipa looks like someone who wants to share her specific love for specific books and is using the power of her celebrity platform to do so.

Like I say, I can get behind that. Previous book club choices I can get behind include Tommy Orange’s “There There” and Paul Murray’s “The Bee Sting,” and Nobel winner Olga Tokarczuk’s “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.”

Lest we think these are bids to put a patina of highbrow intellectualism over a global pop star, these choices are accompanied by author interviews conducted by Lipa that make it clear she has read these books and is eager to share how these reading experiences have influenced her views of the world.

Oprah and Jenna Bush Hager are excellent enthusiasts for the books they choose. They are readers, but Lipa appears to be someone you might come across in your graduate lit seminar and happily talk books with for hours.

I don’t want this to register as a surprise. I know nothing about Dua Lipa the person, and there’s nothing that says famous pop stars can’t be interested in literature. What is especially exciting about Lipa’s Service95 Book Club is that it’s part of a larger media project also touching on travel, fashion, and activism.

Books are presented as an entirely normal, expected part of a full and fulfilling life. Authors are regular people who write books the way Dua Lipa is a regular (though very glamorous) person who makes pop music hits.

Lipa’s lowkey, non-newsy approach to a book club is familiar and charming, and I look forward to what she has for May.

John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at www.biblioracle.com.

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “Stone Yard Devotional” by Charlotte Wood

2.  “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” by Brian Moore

3. “True Grit” by Charles Portis

4. “All Our Names” by Dinaw Mengestu

5. “Dream State” by Eric Puchner

— John S., Chicago 

For John I’m recommending the jolt of Daniel Woodrell’s “Winter’s Bone.”

1. “Fresh Water for Flowers” by Valérie Perrin

2. “H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life” by Michel Houellebecq

3. “Old Man’s War” by John Scalzi

4. “The Days of Abandonment” by Elena Ferrante

5. “The Year Under the Machine” by Peter Danielsson

— Robert C., Rockford 

This is a big swing, but if it connects, it’s a grand slam: “House of Leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski

1. “The Intuitionist” by Colson Whitehead

2. “River of Books” by Donna Seaman

3. “Bronshtein in the Bronx” by Robert Littell

4. “The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne” by Ron Currie

5. “The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death” by Charlie Huston

— Joe F., Channahon, Illinois

Another big swing. I guess I’m feeling bold this week: “When We Cease to Understand the World” by Benjamin Labatut.

Get a reading from the Biblioracle

Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.

But in Frank’s community — and hundreds like it in Illinois — proximity is not a prerequisite for access. Not with a state’s-worth of reading material available for the asking.

For nearly 15 years, she has made use of a popular library loaning system that has allowed suburban towns, local universities and small museums to share their books and other materials with each other. Overseen by the Reaching Across Illinois Library System and partially funded by the federal government, the books are shuttled between libraries and loaned out to interested parties in just a few days.

The delivery program has become so entrenched in northern and western Illinois communities, more than 7.9 million books and other resources were shared among 1,250 libraries last year at no extra cost to the institutions or patrons. Couriers also logged more than 1.1 million miles moving the materials around the area, according to RAILS.

“It’s like magic,” Frank, 72, said.

But that magic may soon disappear.

President Donald Trump last month ordered the gutting of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency that serves as a key source of funding for museums, libraries and educational institutions across the country. The cuts, which are still being rolled out, could prove devastating to the interlibrary loan program throughout the region.

RAILS and the Illinois Heartland Library System, the state’s other major library delivery service that reaches southern and central parts of Illinois, receive about $2.5 million annually for delivery services, about one-third of their budgets, through IMLS funding. Though the state was told to expect this year’s award around April 20, the program officer who oversees Illinois funding has been terminated and the money has not yet arrived, according to a spokesman for Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias.

Several states, including California, Connecticut and Washington, already have been stripped of their 2025 allocations. And South Dakota libraries recently were instructed to suspend its interlibrary courier program.

“Stripping these vital resources threatens the sustainability of our libraries and amounts to a disinvestment in an educated and informed society,” Giannoulias, who also serves as the state librarian, said in a statement.

Before placing IMLS staff on leave last month, acting Director Keith E. Sonderling said the federal agency would realign its mission to fall into lockstep with the Trump administration.

“We will revitalize IMLS and restore focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country in future generations,” Sonderling said in a statement.

IMLS did not return repeated requests for comment.

The union representing IMLS employees has warned that without staff members to administer the programs, it’s most likely the grants will be terminated. If the grant falls through, it would send RAILS, one of the country’s largest interlibrary sharing programs, into doubt.

“When you ask our libraries, (it’s) the thing that they just could not live without, frankly,” said Joe Filapek, RAILS’ associate executive director.

Founded in 2011, RAILS provides a wide range of services, from continuing education and consulting resources to e-content support and interlibrary loans. Without IMLS funding, the delivery system would take the biggest hit, officials said.

Funding cuts would likely slow loan deliveries, reducing the number of books in circulation and forcing patrons to wait longer, officials said.

“In 2025, when I can order something to have it on my doorstep in two hours, to tell your residents that they might have to wait two weeks to get a book through delivery, it’s just not … sustainable,” Filapek said.

Books clubs may be hit

Potential service delays would be felt particularly hard in communities such as Hinckley, a small town about 17 miles west of Aurora. For nearly a century, the public library has rented space in the village’s community building, and it relies on RAILS deliveries to enhance its modest collections.

The Hinckley library has one full-time staff member — library Director Rylie Roubal — and five part-time staff members. Last year, Hinckley library members borrowed about 20,000 items from the library — almost 3,000 of them from interlibrary loans through RAILS.

Roubal said they receive deliveries three times a week. The frequency of delivery is dependent on the volume of books being requested. Reduced service would leave Hinckley residents without the materials they need because the library can’t afford to purchase them, she said.

“We don’t have any slack,” Roubal said, noting that having to pay for delivery would mean cuts to other things — books, hours, staff. “Every budget year, we’re trying to figure out how, how do we increase minimum wage while still keeping the lights on. And can we buy enough books, while also keeping the furniture from falling apart?”

RAILS’ Executive Director Monica Harris said smaller libraries are justified in their concerns.

“It effectively can kill off services, if you’re held to only the materials that you have there on your shelf in your tiny, little, maybe one-room library that’s open only a certain number of hours a week,” Harris said.

Yorkville Public Library, with just five full-time employees and 20 part-time staff, is similarly reliant on interlibrary loans. From May 2023 to April 2024, for example, of the approximately 90,000 checkouts their library saw that year, over 16,000 were materials from other libraries obtained via interlibrary loans, according to Yorkville Public Library’s Director Shelley Augustine.

Ten miles west of Yorkville in Sandwich, which has a population of about 7,200 people, Jennifer Hahn worries IMLS cuts could affect programming her family counts on.

Hahn, 37, is a regular at her local library’s monthly book club. Her 7- and 8-year-old daughters are in book clubs too, she said. And the groups rely on interlibrary loans.

“Our collections aren’t that large,” she said, “and there’s sometimes a distance between us and the next library, being a little bit more rural. If our library doesn’t have the physical source that we need … we don’t have the ability to necessarily drive that distance to go pick up materials for research or learning purposes.”

Hahn said her book club was notified that without loans, the program could be limited if not cease completely .

“The librarian was very clear that if this gets cut, the interlibrary loans, we probably would not be able to have a book club because we won’t be able to get enough copies to supply all of the people that want to read them every month,” she said.

Seeing that kind of potential loss, Hahn said, is disheartening.

“It’s knowledge,” she said. “To have knowledge limited is really discouraging.”

Warrenville Public Library District doesn’t rely on direct federal funding, but it does benefit from RAILS, a resource that Executive Director Jason Stuhlmann said he is “very concerned” about. His library has about 27 employees, half full-time and half part-time.

“In the grand scheme of things, we’re on the smaller end of libraries,” he said, “and there’s only so much we can purchase.”

The effects extend to larger library systems, too.

The Aurora Public Library is predominantly funded by property taxes and doesn’t depend as much on grants as some smaller libraries, according to the library’s director of marketing and communications, Miriam Meza-Gotto. But the impact to book delivery services would still be felt — potentially leading to less immediate access or fewer books for Aurora residents to borrow.

And although the impacts may be less immediate for larger library systems, the effects may be felt indirectly down the line, Meza-Gotto said. For example, small neighboring libraries may reduce services or materials or limit hours, meaning the population Aurora serves may grow as patrons turn to them.

Executive Director of the Naperville Public Library Dave Della Terza likewise noted the potential for indirect consequences, particularly through RAILS. While Naperville’s library system is almost entirely funded through property tax revenue, Della Terza said that RAILS is “a very valuable partner” that does a lot for Naperville Public Library that the system couldn’t do on its own.

That extends just beyond interlibrary loans, he said. RAILS also supplies Naperville Public Library with webinars, trainings and continued education for staff.

“Could we make it work? Yes,” Della Terza said. “But you know, what (RAILS) does right now is very valuable. … It would take a lot more of our energy, effort and money to make things work (and even then) not as efficiently as RAILS can when they oversee such a large area and they work with so many libraries.”

Orland Park Library Director Mary Adamowski said that when the administration started slashing various federal agencies and organizations, she had her fingers crossed that it wasn’t going to affect IMLS.

“But as soon as the executive order came through … we knew that there would be a ripple effect across the nation with the libraries,” she said.

Adamowski reiterated concern for RAILS but also lamented the threat to future funding opportunities that IMLS cuts pose.

“It strips away these vital resources that we want to be able to offer to our patrons,” she said.

And libraries, which provide free access to books, entertainment, internet and technology, become a particularly valuable resource during times of economic uncertainty. This is especially true in under-resourced populations, Harris said.

“These libraries know how needed they are,” Harris said. “They wanna make sure that they’re there for their communities. This is why they got into this work.”

What happens next?

On April 4, a coalition of attorneys general from 21 states — including Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul — filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the IMLS cuts. They argue that the president “cannot decide to unilaterally override laws governing federal spending and that this executive order unconstitutionally overrides Congress’ power to decide how federal funds are spent.”

But as funding remains uncertain, it’s up to the local libraries to keep their patrons informed about what will happen — a job the typical library employee didn’t sign up for, Harris said.

“We’re talking about civil servants,” Harris said. “They’re giving story times to small children, like they’re checking out people’s books for them and helping older people learn how to use technology …They didn’t go to school to be advocates to their local legislator. This is something that they just want to continue to do, the work that they’re doing.”

When Frank moved to Naperville more than four decades ago, one of the first things she did was visit the local library, she said.

Frank relocated to town for work, becoming the first professional employee of Naper Settlement, Naperville’s outdoor history museum. She retired 33 years later as the museum’s president and CEO. To that end, from both a professional and personal perspective, IMLS funding “is very dear to my heart,” Frank said.

These days, Frank makes use of RAILS’ interlibrary loan service monthly, she said.

“It adds such a richness to my own reading access,” she said. “Without RAILS, that is going to be greatly missed. It will be a void.”

Our media is fractured, long past the days of trusted, broadly accessed news sources. Information crops up on social media decontextualized and severed from its origins or even from a coherent chronology.

Artificial intelligence can be used to spoof voices, images and even video, so we literally cannot believe what we see with our own eyes if we encounter it online.

Historically, one of the sources that, at least in theory, could fill this void is individual, trusted voices, journalists and commentators who have built up a track record of rigor and fairness.

A new book by Eoin Higgins, “Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left,” now throws even this last proposition into question, at least for a couple of very prominent, longstanding public voices, Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald first made his name writing for Salon and then The Guardian before co-founding The Intercept as a publication focused on countering government surveillance and interference with individual rights. He presented himself as a champion of those without access to power.

Taibbi is most known for his time at Rolling Stone, where he frequently and scabrously attacked the financial industry, including characterizing Goldman Sachs in a 2009 article as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Higgins’ book traces the evolution of these two figures, as well as the media landscape in general as institutions have declined, only to be replaced by billionaires who use their wealth to control what we see, hear and believe.

The title and my description make it sound conspiratorial or polemical, but Higgins’ treatment of the subject is scrupulously fair throughout, mapping the long trajectories of the main figures, including tech barons Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel, as the intersection of money and the rise of the social internet created different incentive structures around what information to share and how.

We’ve arrived in a place where, once having excoriated Goldman Sachs, Matt Taibbi became one of the handpicked conveyors of the richest man alive’s (Elon Musk) so-called “Twitter files.” Greenwald has gone from leftist firebrand to a favorite of right-wing media and serial apologist for Donald Trump. It’s certainly possible that these changes of viewpoint are sincere, the byproduct of lived experience, but it’s hard to turn away from the influence of Andreessen, Thiel and others in using their wealth to control the dissemination of what gets into the world for others to experience.

Not all the examples are as obvious as Thiel’s famous bankrolling of Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit, which bankrupted the Gawker website, settling a longstanding grudge against the site. But the message becomes clear: The foundation of a journalistic ecosystem predicated on public support in the interests of a public good has been significantly subsumed by the interests of the ultra-wealthy.

Parts were an uncomfortable read for me. Higgins discusses the development and implications of the Substack platform, where I maintain my newsletter, The Biblioracle Recommends, and how this platform, significantly funded by Andreessen, has provided a home to content (science denial, open Nazism) that would never find purchase in a place like this newspaper.

Does this make me at least a little complicit? Maybe, but it’s also one of the few remaining places a writer can go to make additional income.

Higgins is clear, the challenge isn’t just a few billionaires, but a world significantly unmoored from the institutions that once helped hold us together.

John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “Bertie’s Guide to Life and Mothers” by Alexander McCall Smith
2. “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens
3. “The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War” by Michael Shaara
4. “The Man Who Died Twice” by Richard Osman
5. “Vigilance: The Life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad” by Andrew K. Diemer

— Ron L., Naperville

For Ron, I’m recommending a contemporary classic of small-town life, “Empire Falls” by Richard Russo.

1. “Wonder Boys” by Michael Chabon
2. “Everyone Knows You Go Home” by Natalia Sylvester
3. “Empire of Pain” by Patrick Radden Keefe
4. “Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan
5. “And Then There Were None” by Agatha Christie

— Lisa K., Highland Park

This is not an emotionally easy read, but I think Lisa doesn’t mind a story that gets to the marrow, “The Free” by Willy Vlautin.

1. “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen
2. “Led Zeppelin: The Biography” by Bob Spitz
3. “Presumed Guilty” by Scott Turow
4. “James” by Percival Everett
5. “Miracle Creek” by Angie Kim

— Michael R., Western Springs

I’m chuckling to myself about the juxtaposition of the first two books in this list. Inspired by it, I’m recommending a strange and interesting rock and roll novel, “Great Jones Street” by Don DeLillo.

Get a reading from the Biblioracle

Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.

Sotheby’s auction house announced the sale on Wednesday, Shakespeare’s 461st birthday. It said the May 23 sale will be the first time since 1989 that a set of the First, Second, Third and Fourth Folios has been offered at auction as a single lot.

The auction house estimated the sale price at between 3.5 million and 4.5 million pounds.

After Shakespeare’s death in 1616, his plays were collected into a single volume by his friends John Heminges and Henry Condell, actors and shareholders in the playwright’s troupe, the King’s Men.

The First Folio — fully titled “Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies” — contained 36 plays, of which half were published there for the first time. Without the book, scholars say, plays including “Macbeth,” “The Tempest” and “Twelfth Night” might have been lost. Sotheby’s called the volume “without question the most significant publication in the history of English literature.”

About 750 copies were printed in 1623, of which about 230 are known to survive. All but a few are in museums, universities or libraries. One of the few First Folios in private hands sold for $9.9 million at an auction in 2020.

The First Folio proved successful enough that an updated edition, the Second Folio, was published in 1632, a third in 1663 and a fourth in 1685.

Although the First Folio is regarded as the most valuable, the third is the rarest, with 182 copies known to survive. It is believed the third book’s rarity is because some of the stock was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

The Third Folio included seven additional plays, but only one – “Pericles, Prince of Tyre” – is believed to be by Shakespeare.

But despite being gone for so many years, Reid never forgot her former hometown and made it the setting of her book, “One Stop West of Hinsdale,” published last year.

Reid’s story is about the childhood turbulence she experienced while living in Clarendon Hills in the 1950s and her effort to understand choices made by her parents, after her father leaves and her mother experiences an emotional breakdown.

“I’ve wanted to write a book since I was 6,” Reid said. “I never thought I’d write a memoir.”

That changed while she worked on her master’s degree in writing and the teaching of writing, which she began in 2013.

“I realized that everything I was writing for my coursework — poems, essays, short stories — brought me back to 206 Grant Ave., Clarendon Hills, and a need to understand what happened to my family, how our ‘fairy tale family’ came to deteriorate.”

With that in mind, Reid chose the years 1960-1974 — while she was 7 through 20 — and “picked up the microscope to solve that mystery.”

“Those long ago years now make for an actual period piece, and I thought how my generation might really enjoy a book about the way the peaceful ’50s erupted into the turbulent ’60s, and might identify with my own story,” she said.

“At first I wanted to call it ‘Typical Girl from a ’60s Suburb’” because I believe my story is not all that unique.”

Her book follows the gradual demise of her own family and then goes on to portray how the fallout affected her as a teenager. It includes resolution, understanding, and redemption, she said.

Reid said she had such a wonderful experience as a student attending Walker School through sixth grade, she decided then she wanted to be a teacher.

Reid went on to Hinsdale Junior High and then Hinsdale Central, graduating in 1971. She attended the University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana as a college freshman, before finishing her undergraduate studies at the University of Minnesota.

While there was turmoil in her family, Reid was very happy spending her childhood in Clarendon Hills.

“I loved everything,” she said. “As I say in my book, it was a fairy tale town. Anyone growing up in the ’50s and early ’60s anywhere in the USA probably has the same nostalgia and conviction that we grew up in the best of times. But my childhood on Grant Avenue, despite the fact that my parents’ marriage crumbled, was truly idyllic.”

Reid said she has fond memories of playing kick the can in the street and flashlight tag at night.

“We had bonfires on Saturday evenings up and down the street,” she said. “We played outside during all kinds of weather and only came in when our parents called us.”

Looking back now, Reid said the security and freedom stand out.

“I felt safe everywhere I went,” she said. “I felt free to roam everywhere at any time, with not a shred of fear. That fostered independence and confidence as I grew up.

“Looking back, I also feel privileged and lucky. I am grateful to my parents for raising us there. Being on the train line opened up Chicagoland to me, especially the museums and the theater.”

When she comes back now to visit Clarendon Hills, Reid said she is amazed how close everything is and how anything someone could want is at their fingertips.

Reid said she has a couple of friends living in nearby towns, but has not had family living in Clarendon Hills since 1982. But the thought of moving back has definitely crossed her mind.

“Now that I am 71, I muse about the interesting bookend idea of starting my life there and maybe completing it there,” Reid said. “I feel a sense of peace whenever I return, which is about twice a year. A certain sense of ‘being home,’ despite all the changes, is still in my soul.”

Reid was back in Clarendon Hills April 10 for a discussion about her book at the Clarendon Hills Public Library.

“One Stop West of Hinsdale” took her about six years from start to finish and an additional two years to figure out self-publishing and make choices around that, Reid said.

“I wrote the first draft quickly, in about a year,” she said. “But then it occurred to me I should be speaking to my long-dead dad, rather than the reader. As soon as I started rewriting, I saw immediately it was an excellent choice, and I rewrote the whole book with that voice.

Reid said maybe the best part of her experience with the book has been responses she has received from readers who feel a strong connection with her story because it’s in some way their story, too.

“Or even if it isn’t their story at all, they have been moved emotionally and write to share that with me,” she said. “I can’t describe how gratifying and heartwarming that is for me. It makes it all worthwhile.”

While this was her first published book, Reid said she has plans to write more.

“I have another book in me,” she said. “A novel, this time, not a memoir. It’s pretty much written in my head.”

“One Stop West of Hinsdale” can be purchased at online booksellers, through Reid’s website, www.valeriekuhnreid.com, and at Yankee Peddler, 30 E. Hinsdale Ave., Hinsdale. It is also on the shelves of various local libraries.

Chuck Fieldman is a freelance reporter.

“It seemed obvious that we needed to look back to the country’s core documents,” Ward said. “And that we wanted to get them out quickly.”

On Wednesday, Random House announced that it would publish a hardcover book in July combining the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, followed in November by a hardcover edition of the Federalist Papers. Both books include introductions by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham, who has written biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson among others.

The Random House volumes, released through its Modern Library imprint, will join a prolific market that has surged in recent months. According to Circana, which tracks around 85% of the print retail market, editions of the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers and the U.S. Constitution are selling at their fastest pace since Circana began compiling numbers in 2004.

Around 162,000 combined copies have sold through mid-April, compared to 58,000 during the same time period the year before and around 33,000 in 2023. Sales were around 92,000 in the early months of Trump’s first term, in 2017, more than double the pace of 2016.

Brenna Connor, a book industry analyst for Circana, said the jump “is likely in response to the recent change of administration” and cited increased interest in other books about democracy and government, among them Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny” and the Michael Lewis-edited “Who Is Government?” a collection of essays about civil servants by Dave Eggers, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell and others.

“This pursual of political understanding is playing out in a few different areas,” Connor added.

Meacham, during a recent phone interview with The Associated Press, said that the founders had sought to make sense of a revolutionary era — whether breaking with England or debating how to form a federal government with enough power to rule effectively, without giving it the kind of monarchical authority that enraged the colonies.

Reading the Declaration and other texts, he believes, can give today’s public a similar sense of mission and guiding principles.

“It is a tumultuous moment … to put it kindly,” Meacham said. “One way to address the chaos of the present time, what Saint Paul would call the ‘tribulations’ of the present time, is to re-engage with the essential texts that are about creating a system that is still worth defending.”

The Modern Library books will have many competitors. The 18th century documents all are in the public domain, can be read for free online and anyone can publish them. According to Circana, popular editions have been released by Skyhorse, Penguin, Barnes & Noble and others.

“We generally see increased sales of editions of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution every election cycle, but particularly this year,” said Shannon DeVito, Barnes & Noble’s senior director of book strategy. “This could be because next year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,” she said, “or the fast and furious current political conversations and policy changes.”

The author of this week’s offering is Rebecca Makkai, a stunningly fine novelist of, as the Times notes, five works of fiction, including the Pulitzer finalist “The Great Believers.”

She begins her piece by writing, “Chicago is too big, enormous in both geography and spirit, to capture in its entirety. Locals understand this.” Later, she writes of the “DNA of Chicago: neighborhood as subject, neighborhood as map of the heart.”

I couldn’t agree more. Read what she has to say in her short essay and then see what specific books and authors she recommends. Buy and read one, or more.

Could any Chicago reading list not contain Theodore Dreiser’s “Sister Carrie,” Richard Wright’s “Black Boy,” Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago Poems” or Saul Bellow’s “The Adventures of Augie March”? These usual suspects are joined by titles by such other dead giants as Studs Terkel, Nelson Algren and Gwendolyn Brooks (including her poetry collection “Annie Allen” and for her only novel “Maud Martha”). The list also includes such worthy, very much alive authors as Stuart Dybek (“The Coast of Chicago”), Alex Kotlowitz (“There Are No Children Here” and “An American Summer”), Mark Larson (“Ensemble”), Aleksandar Hemon (“The Lazarus Project”) and Audrey Niffenegger (“The Time-Traveler’s Wife”).

There’s more and whether intended or not, Makkai’s offering is timely and useful, because this coming Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day. It’s a national effort by the American Booksellers Association, to celebrate the country’s independent book stores (more information at www.bookweb.org).

There are events in every state and dozens of cities. And so do we happily have the 2025 Chicagoland Indie Bookstore Day Crawl. Go to www.chilovebooks.com for a handy map and lots of information about the more than 50 book stores you can visit, many of them having specials, events and surprises.

Ellen Hanson is looking forward to Saturday. She is one of the newest members of that small, exclusive, hardworking gang called bookstore owners. She owns Sandmeyer’s, a charming space at 714 S. Dearborn.

“I have always wanted to own a bookstore but spent my working life in professional services,” she told me over the weekend. “After I retired in 2020 I was, frankly, bored. My neighbor Ellen Sandmeyer was selling her store (which she opened with her late husband Ulrich Sandmeyer in 1982) and so I bought it and have been happy ever since.”

There have been some surprises — “the astonishing number of books that are published,” she says — but she is enthusiastic and optimistic about the future for independent book stores. Though COVID wasn’t good for much, book folks have benefitted from increased traffic in stores due to, of all things, the pandemic.

As Louis Menard put it in a New Yorker magazine story last year, “Since the end of the pandemic, there has been a small but significant uptick in the number of independent bookstores. … Reading turned out to be a popular way of passing the time in lockdown, more respectable than binge-watching or other diversions one might think of. A slight decline in sales over the past couple of years suggests that people felt freed up to go out and play pickleball instead of staying home and trying to finish ‘War and Peace.’”

Hanson says, “The community has been very supportive.” She is looking forward to Saturday’s crawl and to the annual Printers Row Lit Fest, which will take over the neighborhood September 6-7.

So, what books should you buy?

You can’t go wrong with any of Makkai’s  suggestions. But if you are looking for something more, I recommend “The Bookshop: The History of the American Bookstore” by Evan Friss, which my colleague John Warner wrote about in the Tribune a few months ago, saying that the book reminds us “that the constants for what makes a bookstore are the people and the books in community with each other.”

Friss does not ignore the numbers, informing us that “In 1958, Americans purchased 72% of their books from small, single-store, personal bookshops. … As recently as 1993, the US Census Bureau counted 13,499 bookstores. … By 2021, however, there were just 5,591 bookstores left.”

He also writes, “Bookstores may be endangered spaces, but they are also powerful spaces.” His book is not a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of the business of books. Rather it is a series of 13 sections, each devoted to what Friss considers notable bookstores and their owners, from Benjamin Franklin and his print shop to Amazon’s stores.

What grabbed me was Chapter 4 and its 20 pages devoted the important, influential role the city has played in the business of books. Focusing on Marshall Field & Company and its once massive book department on the third floor of its main store in the Loop, he cites a British writer who in 1920 described it as “to ordinary English bookshops like a liner to a houseboat. (It is) said to be the largest bookstore in the world.”

It was then one of 164 bookstores in the city, run by an innovative, autocratic woman named Marcella Burns Hafner, barely 5 feet tall but of such forcefulness that she was referred to, in whispers of course, as the Czarina. She is mentioned in another book, 1952’s “Give the Lady What She Wants,” written by my father, Herman Kogan, and his newspapering pal, Lloyd Wendt. They wrote, “Her section became the most famous book department in the country. She staged Chicago’s first book fair … originated the idea of autographing parties.”

She was a real life character worthy of, well, a novel.

rkogan@chicagotribune.com

Several days after finishing the novel, I find myself in the same state of mind, which is a testament to the novel’s unusual approach, and because of that approach, its haunting power.

“Flesh” is the story of István, who we first meet as an adolescent having moved to a new town in Hungary, where he lives in a small apartment with his mother. Adrift like many young teen males, István is — in a way — seduced by his married neighbor and begins a sexual relationship with her. István is not even particularly attracted to the neighbor, but the power of his sexual desire, particularly in the absence of attraction, is both interesting and impossible to resist.

After the neighbor’s husband discovers the affair, István kills the man accidentally as part of a scuffle on the apartment building stairs. He goes to juvenile jail, and once freed, enlists in the Hungarian army, where he winds up experiencing combat — including the death of a friend — in the Iraq war.

The rest of the novel unfolds with István’s fortunes (literally and figuratively) improving. He moves to London and finds work as a bouncer and then is recruited by a private security company, eventually getting steady work as a live-in driver for a wealthy couple with a young son. Throughout his journey, István, despite lacking any kind of apparent charm, or even intention at seduction, is irresistible to a series of women, the pattern started with his next-door neighbor repeating.

This includes the wife of the wealthy couple, much younger than her husband, and frequently shepherded around London and its country environs by István. She initiates an affair, later conducted with increasing openness. István, both vicariously and then directly, is given access to a life of great material privilege, a condition to which he takes with seeming comfort, but also without apparent pleasure.

I’ll leave off the narrative summary there because what Szalay unfurls next generates some surprising and satisfying tension, but the intrigue of this novel goes well beyond its plot.

What’s most fascinating to me as the reader is that Szalay has deliberately removed one of the most potent tools in the novelist’s shed, the ability to render a character’s interiority — their thoughts, feelings, worries and excitements — in exchange for an exceedingly spare accounting of István’s life.

The most frequently used word is “OK,” mostly coming from István in response to something another character has said. We know that he has been through trauma — he sees a therapist for PTSD after his military service — but we are given no insights into how István feels about any of this.

He is stimulated by the sex, but what goes beyond or gets underneath this stimulation is never explored. Other events that would be objectively devastating happen and then are put behind him as life inexorably moves on.

At first, these authorial choices rankled, I thought something was missing, but as I kept reading, I fell in with Szalay’s approach and found myself more and more invested in István, and as the novel heads toward a fateful choice we are, in a way, aching for him, even though we hardly know him.

I’m not sure I would’ve believed novels can work this way, but as I remain haunted by the book and eager to have others check it out, I recognize that with “Flesh,” Szalay has done something quite special.

John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “The Last Amateurs” by John Feinstein
2. “The Passengers” by John Marrs
3. “Stoner” by John Edward Williams
4. “The Color of Law” by Richard Rothstein
5. “Real Americans” by Rachel Khong

— Luca W., Chicago

It’s the inclusion of “Stoner” here that makes me want to recommend a novel that’s very different, but also, for some reason, provided a similar kind of impact on me: “The Italian Teacher” by Tom Rachman.

1. “Blaze Me a Sun” by Christoffer Carlsson
2. “The Fox Wife” by Yangsze Choo
3. “Possession” by A.S. Byatt
4. “In the Distance” by Hernan Diaz
5. “White Noise” by Don DeLillo

— Christine C., Skokie

For Christine, I want a book with a bit of postmodern gamesmanship without being too heavy-handed about it. How about Colson Whitehead’s debut novel? “The Intuitionist.”

1. “What Does it Feel Like” by Sophie Kinsella
2. “The Ride of Her Life” by Elizabeth Letts
3. “Headshot” by Rita Bullwinkel
4. “The Cliffs” by J. Courtney Sullivan
5. “Here One Moment” by Liane Moriarty

— Rita A., Naperville

Rita needs something with enough snap to the story to keep things moving: “Such a Fun Age” by Kiley Reid.

Get a reading from the Biblioracle

Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.

The story begins to unravel as Dunthorne, a writer in search of a story and subject, interviews his grandmother who was part of the escape at age 12, but has a version of the story at odds with the family tale Dunthorne thinks he knows. The furtive escape from Germany to Turkey was on the Orient Express — “two days and nights of eating” — and the return in 1936 was for five weeks of summer fun, including French lessons.

Chagrined, Dunthorne takes it upon himself to unravel the story of Siegfried Merzbacher, a German Jewish chemist who left behind a 2,000-page memoir that somehow ends before sharing the story of his people’s persecution and fleeing to safety. Perhaps this is because, as Dunthorne quickly finds out, his great grandfather spent his career working on projects that resulted in chemical weapons that would one day be used by the Nazi regime that would soon turn genocidal.

“Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance” is the result of Dunthorne following the trail of his great-grandfather’s life, including visits to Oranienburg, where Siegfried plied his trade, both producing dangerous chemicals and developing gas masks to defend against them. He also visits Ammendorf, another site of experimentation that remains so toxic today it is killing its citizens.

Later, Dunthorne travels to the site of the Dersim massacre, where chemical weapons developed by Siegfried’s employer were used in a genocidal attack on Kurdish Turks in the late 1930s. Dunthorne would like an answer to the question that nags at him: How could a Jewish man live with the fact that his work was turned on innocents, including his own people, while he apparently was able to live safely in exile because of this work?

It would be wrong to say that Dunthorne is in search of “the truth” because he is too perceptive an observer to believe that there are hard, unshifting truths to be found. He goes in search of experience, trying to put himself in the place of his grandfather and others who lived through these times, combing through archives, finding shreds of new information that suggest a fresh path and following along. There is no central mystery to the book, and it is better for it. We’re on a journey.

Very quickly and effectively, Dunthorne brings his characters to life, such as Erich in Ammendorf, who is campaigning for the government to recognize the literal poisoning of the community, and Metin, Dunthorne’s guide in Turkey, who cannot let the authorities know what they are actually up to.

Siegfried remains a mystery to both Dunthorne and the reader until a lucky discovery of a thick file of psychiatric reports from an inpatient stay following what appears to be a nervous breakdown. We learn that Siegfried has indeed paid a cost for his complicity, even as he remained unable to tell his story in his own words.

Dunthorne, the author of numerous books, including the novel “The Adulterants,” which remains a favorite of mine, is an excellent companion throughout, telling the story with a mix of comic timing, wry self-depreciation, and genuine appreciation for the strange and difficult lives people live.

He feels no great guilt over his family legacy, but it is clear he feels a responsibility to tell the story well.

Mission accomplished.

John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “West with Giraffes” by Lynda Rutledge
2. “The Demon of Unrest” by Erik Larson
3. “Plainsong” by Kent Haruf
4. “The Only One Left” by Riley Sager
5. “City Primeval” by Elmore Leonard

— Jim K., Wheaton

“Small Mercies” by Dennis Lehane will have the right mix of character depth and plot intrigue to keep Jim invested.

1. “Lives of the Monster Dogs” by Kirsten Bakis
2. “The Phantom Father” by Barry Gifford
3. “Ghosts of Honolulu” by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll Jr.
4. “Take ‘Er Up Alone, Mister!” by John Joseph Hibbits
5. “Love & Whiskey” by Fawn Weaver

— Mike S., Bolingbrook

I think Mike is a good candidate for Hampton Sides’ “The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook.”

1. “Endurance” by Alfred Lansing
2. “Devil in the White City” by Erik Larson
3. “The Wager” by David Grann
4. “Bare-Faced Messiah” by Russell Miller
5. “Knife” by Salman Rushdie

— Daniel M., Buffalo Grove

For Daniel, I’m recommending “The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia” by Paul Theroux.

Get a reading from the Biblioracle

Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.

Born in the late 1890s, the four Lake Forest daughters of prominent families — Ginevra King, Edith Cummings, Margaret Carry and Courtney Letts — grew up together and were bestowed the nickname on account of their beauty and popularity. Many of their activities were captured in the society pages of the Tribune. They were almost never out in public without a chaperone, be it a mother or friend to escort them, as young women of their pedigree were expected to be. They gathered at Onwentsia Club for golf and tennis matches, luncheons and dances. They went to the opera and celebrated the holidays by hosting guests from out of town.

Yet the women Fitzgerald met when they were teenagers and who inspired characters in “The Great Gatsby” had full lives. They put aside their debutante ways — including their grand coming out to society parties — to help gather supplies and funding for the American forces fighting in World War I. Each married and set off on adventures. Three out of the four had children of their own.

Here’s what we found about them in the Tribune’s archives. For more details, visit “Behind the Glamour: Inside and (Outside) F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Lake Forest,” a new exhibition at the History Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff.

Chicago’s connection to ‘The Great Gatsby’

Fitzgerald distilled real-life experiences into characters moving through scenes he’d witnessed in Lake Forest and in his interactions with those from the city. Thanks to Fitzgerald’s meticulous record-keeping, we know the route the novel’s protagonists, under the aliases Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, took to the story’s Long Island setting.

Fitzgerald kept a ledger book in which he listed his literary earnings and daily routine. At the top of page 169, he recorded Daisy Buchanan’s conception by noting: “Met Ginevra.”

Ginevra King

Fitzgerald’s young love for Ginevra inspired him to create Daisy Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby.” They met at a party on Jan. 4, 1915 — just weeks after she attended a party at the residence of the Mitchells, her future in-laws. Yet her connection to Fitzgerald and the book wasn’t written about in the Tribune until 1965.

The comings and goings of Ginevra, whose father was a stockbroker, were well-documented in the Tribune. She danced, sang and played instruments. Her travels home from Westover boarding school in Middlebury, Connecticut, were reason to celebrate. Her family threw parties at their sprawling Lake Forest mansion on Ridge Road.

During World War I, she took classes on food rationing and sold flowers to aid war funds and families of British and Canadian soldiers. Instead of donning an Easter bonnet in 1918, she was given a uniform to wear in her work with the State Council of Defense.

Her wedding to Ensign William H. Mitchell on Sept. 4, 1918, at St. Chrysostom’s Episcopal Church in the city was the social event of the year. From the Madame X column on Sept. 8, 1918: “ … the extreme youth of the bridal couple, their gay and gallant air, their uncommon good looks, the distinguished appearance of both sets of parents, the smart frocks and becoming uniforms, all made an impression of something brilliant, charming, and cheerful.” Her sister Marjorie married one of Mitchell’s brothers in 1924.

Her beauty continued in the 1920s when, then a mother of three, she was interviewed by columnist Antoinette Donnelly, who wrote, “She does not sit down to be waited upon. She keeps moving in lively fashion to answer the phone, to recover a stray toy for the young son, and, as I remarked before, she is an early riser with much to do in her busy world.”

During a gathering at their home in November 1931, robbers broke in and held Ginevra and eight others captive for 20 minutes while they robbed them of $150,000 in jewelry. Most of the items were recovered and three of the robbers were captured.

The marriage didn’t last and Ginevra traveled to Reno, Nevada, for a divorce. On April 7, 1942, she married John T. Pirie Jr. — a grandson of the founder of Carson Pirie Scott & Co. and chairman of the board at the company — quietly at her parents’ Gold Coast apartment.

Ironically, there was a connection between Ginevra’s second husband and actor and Winnetka native Bruce Dern, who played Tom Buchanan in the 1974 movie “The Great Gatsby.” Dern’s grandfather Bruce MacLeish was also previously chairman of the same company’s board.

Ginevra, who founded the Women’s Board of the American Cancer Society, died on Dec. 13, 1980 — a month after her second husband. She was 82.

Edith Cummings

Edith, who met Fitzgerald, was his inspiration for golfer Jordan Baker in “The Great Gatsby.” Indeed Edith’s earliest mention in the Tribune was for a competition. The decorated cart she rode in as a toddler for Owentsia’s open-air horse show in 1904 won second prize. It was the first of many epic competitions for the talented golfer — and though golf was the focus of her 20s during the 1920s, it was not the entirety of her life.

Inheriting a love of golf from her banker father, Edith commonly was listed as the winner of summer competitions on Tuesdays — ladies day — at Owentsia’s course. While her friends were on their first or second husbands, Edith was focused on the sport. By 1921, she and her mother set sail for Europe, where she was one of seven women selected by the U.S. Golf Association to play in Scotland. Winters soon became dedicated to golf in California, Florida or Europe. In October 1923, Edith won the U.S. women’s amateur golf championship in New York. Upon returning to Lake Forest after clinching the award, Edith was presented with an honorary lifetime membership to Owentsia — the first woman given the distinction. She followed up her national championship by winning the Western Open here in August 1924.

Just a year or so later, however, Edith’s name disappeared from the results pages. By July 1927, the Tribune society page wondered if she had given up the sport altogether. By December of that year, she gave friends notice that she was moving to New York to pursue a career in interior design. She was back in Lake Forest by the spring.

Edith traded golf for horseback riding, then hunting. Almost out of nowhere, her engagement to Curtis B. Munson of New York was announced on Jan. 15, 1934. The Tribune described Munson, who later penned the Munson Report, as “Charming, but nearly always away.”

Edith was a bride in a “severely simple white satin gown” at her mother’s home on 1550 N. State Pkwy. in the city on April 7, 1934. It was a second marriage for Munson, who had three daughters.

They stayed married and moved to Washington, D.C., during World War II. He was later cited for courageous conduct and she served in France for the Red Cross. He died in 1980 after a stroke and she followed on Nov. 20, 1984.

The Edith Cummings Munson Golf Award is presented each year by the Women’s Golf Coaches Association to a NCAA Division I student-athlete.

Margaret Carry

Though the Tribune once described her as “one of the prettiest and most popular girls in the younger social set,” Margaret rarely garnered headlines of her own. Like her friends, Margaret’s name was frequently listed as being in attendance at Owentsia, but she often was no more than just another face in the crowd.

Her father was president of railroad car manufacturer Pullman Co. and also served as director for a variety of banks, building and utility companies. During World War I, he moved the family to Washington, D.C., where he served as chairman of the Shipbuilding Labor Adjustment Board and director of operations for the U.S. Shipping Board. That’s also where Margaret made her debut in November 1919.

The biggest headline of her life was the announcement of her engagement in December 1919 to 34-year-old Edward A. Cudahy Jr. — vice president of his family’s meat packing company. Cudahy had been kidnapped and held for ransom 19 years earlier when the family lived in Omaha. He was released unscathed after his family paid a $25,000 ransom.

The Catholic couple was married on Dec. 27, 1919, at Holy Name Cathedral with Ginevra, Edith and Courtney Letts as bridesmaids. They sailed to Cuba for their honeymoon.

Despite having three children together, the family was fractured after Margaret divorced her husband on March 6, 1942. Just three months later she died unexpectedly at her home on 377 Woodlawn Ave., Lake Forest. No cause for her death was listed in the Tribune.

Courtney Letts

Like the other three women of The Big Four, Courtney grew up in Lake Forest, then attended boarding school at Westover. One of the earliest stories about her in the Tribune noted that she was rushed home from the Connecticut school in February 1915 for emergency surgery to treat appendicitis.

Her father was a prominent food distributor who also owned vegetable canning plants and coffee roasters. His work directing supplies for the American Red Cross took the Letts family to Washington, D.C., during World War I. That’s also where Letts was introduced to society during an afternoon reception hosted by her parents in December 1918.

What makes Courtney stand out among her friends is that she lived the longest, married the most husbands and hobnobbed with a U.S. president, ambassadors from around the world and once was seated next to a real-life prince during his visit to Chicago.

Her first marriage was to “childhood chum” Wellesley Stillwell. With Ginevra as matron of honor and Edith as a bridesmaid, the couple wed on Jan. 10, 1920, at St. Chrysostom’s.

Their union, however, didn’t last long. Courtney sailed for Europe with their two children in December 1923 before their divorce was finalized in late 1924.

“The real cause of Mrs. Stillwell’s divorce, other than general incompatibility, has never been revealed, as it was granted on the technical ground of desertion in Paris,” the Tribune reported on March 3, 1925.

Courtney’s mother let the cat out of the bag that her daughter was engaged to be married for the second time. John Borden was an explorer who family made its fortune by mining for silver in Colorado and invested in the Chicago Yellow Cab Co. Borden’s refined tastes included playing polo and yachting. During World War I, he converted his 475-ton pleasure craft into a submarine chaser for the American army.

The couple wed in a simple ceremony on March 14, 1925, in Washington, D.C. As a wedding present, Borden bought Courtney the Astor Street home formerly occupied by Ginevra’s family.

Courtney gave birth to a baby girl, and Borden wanted to name her Courtney, like her mother. Courtney already had a daughter named Courtney with her first husband, but Borden insisted the child be named in that way. So, Courtney then had two daughters named Courtney.

The Bordens traveled to Alaska — where she shot a polar bear — among other locales, which inspired her to write “The Cruise of the Northern Light” and “Adventures in a Man’s World: the Initiation of a Sportsman’s Wife.”

Courtney left her husband for Reno, Nevada, in May 1933 and was granted a divorce there on July 1, 1933. Borden married his 21-year-old secretary two weeks later.

Before the month was over, Courtney married Argentinian ambassador to the United States Felipe A. Espil in Washington, D.C. The Tribune reported that she visited the White House and met President Franklin D. Roosevelt twice. But when Espil was called back to Argentina in 1943, Courtney accompanied him to Buenos Aires. After stints in Madrid and Sao Paulo, Courtney published two books in Spanish. She remained with Espil until his death in 1972.

Courtney married for the fourth time in 1974, after she returned to the U.S. She died at 95 in Washington, D.C.

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