Looking for something to read while on a beach vacation? Or a long flight? Or a thunderstorm? Our WGN Radio Book Club has some suggestions.

John Williams (weekdays 10am-2pm, including The Noon Business Lunch, plus the Mincing Rascals podcast)

IN THE DAYS OF MY YOUTH I WAS TOLD WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MAN: A Memoir, by Tom Junod
I haven’t finished this one but it is such good writing, around such a remarkable character. Junod – noted sports writer – details his life with, and relationship around, his father. His dad is a LOT, “a handbag salesman with movie-star looks who lived a dual life filled with secrets, infidelity, and staggering charisma.” Yet the son loved the father as the father loved the son. But something remarkable happened at the father’s memorial that caused Junod to look further into their past. And away we go…

I’m reading again Bill Bryson’s One Summer. As I related previously, it is about America in the year 1927. And SO much of it is about Chicago. On your Chicago reads list, this is a must. IT fast, funny and crazy. And it happened here!

Bob Kessler (news)

The Searcher (2020) Tana French
Even though detective novels are a well-worn path, the author manages to find a new way of presenting it. A retired Chicago cop leaves his life behind in the U.S. to fix up a cottage in Ireland and he finds himself wrapped up in a missing person case. The characters and their relationships give its unique flavor and I look forward to reading the more recently published sequels.

Ghost Town (2026) Tom Perrotta
An exquisite, smart, engaging novel with a dose of the supernatural about reconciling with one’s past even after trying to distance from it as much as possible.

The Giant: Orson Welles, The Artist and the Shadow (2025) Youssef Daoudi
Orson Welles’ films are legendary as is his life story. This is an excellent primer for both, told in an innovative graphic novel style.

Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Ordinary People Forging a Revolution (2026) Anand Gopal
The stories of atrocities committed during the Syrian Revolution and the ISIS incursion that followed might keep you up at night. But, it’s important to know about them. People gave up everything in their fight against tyranny in their country and were subject to unimaginable horrors. The author does a brilliant job of sharing their experiences, presented in stunning, literary detail. Difficult to read but arguably essential to gain an understanding of human nature: how low it can sink and how high it can soar.

Soul Survivor: A Biography of Al Green (2017) Jimmy McDonough
If this account is to be believed, Al Green is a far different person than the public narrative, which usually reads along the lines of, ‘he was a super successful singer who gave it all up to become a preacher!’ That’s not untrue but there’s far more to this extremely talented artist but very complicated person. And, as exhaustive as Jimmy McDonough’s research is, getting to the so-called ‘Real Al Green’ is damn near impossible – even for Al Green himself.

Steve Alexander (agribusiness reporter)

H is for Hawk by Helen McDonald
I was expecting this highly praised memoir/biography would be similar to, and as rewarding as, two of my favorite wildlife-related books from last year, Raising Hare, and Sipsworth. Sorry to say it wasn’t. McDonald writes about grief after her father died, which she coped with by trying to train a goshawk, a difficult endeavor. She alternates that with a biography of T.H. White, who wrote a book in 1951 about his inept attempts to train a goshawk. A lot of people loved this book. “M for meh” for me.

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
Keefe owns the in-depth crime reporting genre, able to craft unsolved murders into page turners that read like novels. His Say Nothing from 2019 about the Troubles in Belfast was brilliant. This one, an investigation of a 19-year-old man’s apparent suicidal dive into the Thames from a posh London high-rise apartment, and his involvement with the seedy side of London’s private nightclubs and a ruthless gangster known as Indian Dave, is very good, but I didn’t find it as compelling as Say Nothing.

The Dutch House by Anne Patchett is a novel spread over five decades about a mansion in a suburb of Philadelphia and the family that lived in it. The story focuses on Maeve and her brother Danny, who are kicked out of the house by their stepmother when their father dies unexpectedly. Hilarity does not ensue, but some surprises do. Patchett, as always, tells a great story.

The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins is a thriller/murder mystery set on an island off Scotland that is connected by a strip of sand and is unreachable 12 hours a day when the tides are high. Great read.

Steve Bertrand (host of Steve Bertrand on Books podcast, retired after over 40 years as a WGN Radio news anchor and reporter)

Daughters of the Sun and Moon by Lisa See
New York Times bestselling author Lisa See’s latest book is Daughters of the Sun and Moon. Publisher’s Weekly calls it one of the best books of the summer. She writes about the little known story of the 1870 massacre of Chinese immigrants in what was then a small, dusty and very dangerous Los Angeles. The story is told through the eyes of three women who emigrated to California. There’s some great history here. For example, after the Civil War, slavery was abolished everywhere with one exception: Chinese woman in California.

Also, I have two beach reads that come with something to think about. So, when you pack up your car and wipe away the sand on your feet, you’ll leave the beach with more than just a sunburn.

We Are Gathered Here Today by Bobby Finger
Popular podcaster and novelist Finger writes about a big Texas wedding where the bride’s best friend Finn is the officiant. Finn is engaged as well but he returns home for the wedding without tell his friends about his husband to be. He has some doubts. Not about his fiancé but about marriage as an institution. This is a great read: funny and poignant all at once.

Alan Opts Out by Courtney Maum
Alan Anderson is a hard driving ad exec whose job it is to get us to buy stuff we don’t need. All is going well: big house, stuffy neighborhood and kids at the most expensive schools. But then an ad pitch goes bad and Alan is left to consider the consumerism he’s gotten rich selling. As the title suggests, he vows to give up the culture of modern comfort and moves into a child’s playhouse in his back yard. His wife and neighbors aghast, but then his new sales pitch starts to catch on. This is big fun but might have you thinking twice next time to log on to Amazon.

Sara Tieman (promotions & public relations manager emeritus and station book club international correspondent)

I am 59 books in for the year and the following are my recent highlights:

The Glassmaker (2024) – Tracy Chevalier
I picked this book up with a recommendation from a lady in the book club at my local library. It is historical fiction with the added twist of time travel, following the Rosso family, glassmakers living in Murano in the late 15th century. The time travel conveys a bit of mystery and the bending of rules and we as readers are asked to believe that time and the world runs a bit differently in Murano. I would have preferred it if the book followed different generations of the Rosso family through time, rather than them living for 500 years or so. I w...