John Williams

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 was reminded of Billy Joel’s song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” during the paragraphs of forward time jump. That said, the detail of the family working in glass and later in beads was deep and the setting kept me enthralled to the end. 

Lady Tremaine (2026) – Rachel Hochhauser
This is a reimagining of the Cinderella fairy tale with the character we’ve come to know as the villain in the spotlight and I loved the counter viewpoint. Lady Etheldreda Tremaine Bramley is not a villain or a wicked stepmother, but a twice-widowed woman with trained peregrine falcon Lucy by her side. She must manage a crumbling estate, feed her family, and secure futures for her daughters despite limited financial resources. Her stepdaughter Elin is portrayed as a girl who cares more about being a lady and doing not much of anything outside quoting quotes about the proper way to conduct oneself instead of participating in the upkeep of her family home. The fairy tale status quo is further challenged with the prince who is not charming in the least. Pick this up if you want a different perspective 

The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald (2025) – John U. Bacon
John Williams and Bob Kessler raved about this book last year, and I’ve finally gotten around to it. This is as fast-paced and engaging as David Grann’s The Wager or The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides. I imagine all of us who have grown up near Lake Michigan or any of the Great Lakes have an awareness of the power of waves just at the shoreline, let alone how frightening those rolling waves could be if you’re a ship in the middle of the Lakes. Bacon digs into the differences between “lakers” and “salties,” reiterating that the Lake can be more perilous than the sea. He further delivers on the human element, so as the reader you are further invested in the lives of the crew aboard the Fitz, making their deaths in the 1975 sinking all the more heartbreaking. 

Yesteryear (2026) – Caro Claire Burke
I wasn’t so sure about this book as the “tradwife” description had put me off, but curiosity got the better of me. I’m also very proud of myself because I did get a bit frustrated during the reading and wanted to skip and skim ahead to see where it was all going to land, but I fought that urge. What’s it about? Natalie Heller Mills is a tradwife social media influencer and lives on a farm called Yesteryear with her family of at least five kids (I lost count) while pregnant with her sixth. She has two nannies and hires a live-in producer to help with her business, selling a pioneering type lifestyle to her followers. The day after producer Shannon leaves, Natalie wakes up to find she’s been transported back to yesteryear and is a true pioneer woman, surrounded by kids and a husband not her own. Chapters switch from Natalie in yesteryear to scenes of her former real life. I’m sharing it here because while I didn’t love it (yet the payoff was enough that I am still thinking about it), there’s a lot to discuss and I think it would be a great choice for book clubs. Or, if you love novels built around unreliable narrators, this is the one for you. 

John Williams was joined again by Green Attic Co-Owner/CEO Andrei Turea to talk about how they help you stay cool, how to improve your insulation, and how to take advantage of their available utility rebates.

Get scheduled for a free home inspection to start saving and to stay cool this summer by calling 847-777-4777 or go to GreenAttic.com!

John Williams brings you another round of Speed Jokes. Keep sending yours to [email protected].

Eric Zorn, Publisher of The Picayune Sentinel, joins John Williams to talk about ‘The Dutch Reach’ and what drivers can do to be more careful when exiting a car, Uber and Lyft routinely using artificial intelligence to charge customers dramatically different prices, and why he believes good friends make the best officiants at wedding ceremonies that are not particularly religious, and if we are starting to see kinks in President Trump’s armor.

Dr. Jeffrey Kopin, Chief Medical Officer for Northwestern Medicine Catherine Gratz Griffin Lake Forest Hospital, joins John Williams to talk about a new study that shows GLP-1 medications may improve male fertility, and why you should be aware of your blood pressure and pulse pressure.

John Williams brings you another round of Speed Jokes. Keep sending yours to [email protected].

Sam Panayotovich of Fox 32 Sports and formerly of WGN Radio joins John Williams to talk about the top sports stories making news this week including the incredible early season performance from your Chicago White Sox, how the USA team did in its first World Cup match, the Knicks winning the NBA Championship, and the Bulls hiring a new head coach.

Christopher Borrelli, features writer at the Chicago Tribune, joins John Williams to share his thoughts about the Obama Presidential Center.

The great Mr. Fix-It, Lou Manfredini, joins John Williams to tell us the projects we need to be working on this week. Lou tells us that now would be a great time to start budgeting for a whole-house generator. Lou also answers all of your home improvement questions.

Listen to HouseSmarts Radio on WGN each Saturday morning at 6 am.

John Williams brings you another round of Speed Jokes. Keep sending yours to [email protected].