Stroll into any independent bookstore in this fine city, and you're guaranteed to find something way more interesting than you would on the Barnes & Noble sales shelf. We hopped from 'hood to 'hood searching for some true indie finds that we think you'll like giving or getting any time of the year. (We know you don't want to even look at another
Oprah's Book Club pick.) We've found tomes for everyone—from the aspiring comic book artist to the wannabe crime fighter.
For the budding comic book artist, pick up Anders Nilsen's Big Questions 10 at Chicago Comics
Comic books are alive and well at this Belmont mainstay on Clark St that almost looks like a toy store from the outside. Inside the spacious, high-ceilinged space, you'll find all the new comics on sale here, including Chicago-based Anders Nilsen's new book, Big Questions 10: The Hand That Feeds—it's the tenth in his evocative and sometimes dark Big Questions comic series. In the beginning, his stories were told mostly from animal perspectives; now they include humans as well (including one mute called The Idiot). In this tenth book, birds fight over food and blood spills—while the black crows laugh, the wild dogs approach.
For the young fiction writer, pick up Jonathan Messinger's Hiding Out at Women & Children First Bookstore
Andersonville wouldn't be what it is today without this independent, woman-minded bookstore. And even though he's not a lady, Jonathan Messinger's short story collection has found a home here. In the titular piece, a lonely office worker keeps boredom (and insanity) at bay by living in a fantasy world; in other stories, a young boy contemplates mortality while playing a never-ending video game and a father discovers an angel roaming his kitchen at night. True to the book's title, Messinger's stories resonate with anyone who has ever been lost in the land of thoughts.
For the artist/musician type, pick up The Sea & Cake's Sam Prekop's Photographs at Quimby's
Where can you find a mini-button machine, a couch for lounging, art books and local zines? At Quimby's (a.k.a. the most hardcore indie bookshop in the city). If the quirky selection of books doesn't send you spinning, the snarky, too-busy-to-help-you lady behind the counter will probably win you over. For a store with such character, we recommend checking out an equally as creative book, like Photographs by The Sea & Cake's Sam Prekop; it comes chock full of crisp black-and-white photos of our gritty city and spontaneous, wood-block geometric patterns. And did we mention that it comes with a CD of Prekop's own lulling electronic tunes?
For the future detective, pick up Michael Harvey's The Chicago Way at Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore
Future Sherlock Holmes, crime journalists, documentary producers, lawyers and anyone with a taste for blood-filled danger will fall for this mystery-book-filled store—and Michael Harvey's first book. Centuries & Sleuth's is full of rocking chairs and has cozy, deep-green walls; though we don't encourage it, you could sit here all day reading Harvey's page-turner about fast-talking private investigator Michael Kelly, who gets in over his head in a down-right-dirty Chicago murder. The book reads like a murder mystery movie—with action, quick words and sharp, severe stabs.
For the queer culture fanatic, pick up Allison Bechdel's Fun Home at Unabridged Books, Inc.
If you haven't read Bechdel's long-running comic series Dykes to Watch Out For, we recommend you skip it and read the author's excellent graphic novel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Anyone with a slightly—or wholly—dysfunctional family can relate to her story of growing up lesbian with a closeted mortician father, who used his funeral home access to, well, his advantage in more ways than one. Not only is the art more striking than the sometimes-raw scrawl of Dykes, but this story is actually true. Likened to the work of David Sedaris, Bechdel's new book deals with the author's own twisted and fascinating childhood.
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