Are you looking for some suggestion of books to read over the holidays or during the new year? Or maybe some gift ideas? Here’s a new list of recommendations from John Williams, Steve Alexander, Bob Kessler and Sara Tieman.

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

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing – The Dark History of the Information Age in Five Extraordinary Hacks, by Scott Shapiro. 

What a well written, smart, (still) relevant book. This is a history of cybersecurity and computer hacking by Scott J. Shapiro, a professor of philosophy and law at Yale Law School. While the book came out in 2023 – and so much has happened since then – it recalls famous worldwide outages and hacks and how they happened.  Its dive into the release of a Paris Hilton sex tape from her phone is especially interesting.  And the language and mechanics of computers – and their vulnerabilities – are laid bear in layman’s terms.

I want to give a plug to:  40 Years, 40 Films by Nick Digilio.  Our former host and one of Chicago’s most ardent film lovers and critics has complied a fun summary of some of his favorite movies.

How To Be a Citizen by CL Skach

This thoughtful little book – which came out last year – made me pause and think about our laws and how we decide to govern ourselves.  She challenges some ofd our (mine, anyway) core thoughts about society. Says the author, more important than strict laws and their enforcement is “spontaneous, self-enforcing cooperation,”  It’s a leap of faith in humanity but at good Idea, if nothing else…

I’m still carrying around Four Wings and a Prayer, by Sue Halpern.

I started rereading this in November when I heard about the annual migration of Monarch butterflies.  This is a fun, fascinating explanation of the marvelous, fragile – but durable – creatures that fly thousands of miles each year.  And it’s a fascinating exploration of the people who chart and try to help them.Broadcast Live, 71 True Stories Including Some I’d Just as Soon Forget by Steve Vogel. I spent several years listening to Vogel  on WJBC, Bloomington when I was doing radio at WMBD, Peoria.  Steve was a big talent in a medium market and his station’s audience share was higher than any station in any market in America.  His Reasonable Doubt broke down the true crime drama of the Hendricks family murders.  That book was a NY Times best seller, and he’s applied the same writing skills to a reflection on his life – in the military in broadcasting and corporate America.  Central Illinois fans will very much like this book; the rest of us will discover a thoughtful man whose stories are relatable and surprising.

Steve Alexander (agribusiness reporter)

The Uncool by Cameron Crowe – 2025 – 322 pages

I loved this book, but I also loved Crowe’s Almost Famous, the 2000 film which covers a lot of the same territory. The film was fiction, but much of it was right out of Crowe’s life. By 13, he was already a music critic, and by the time he graduated high school at 15 (his mom had him skip a couple of grades along the way), Crowe was using his youth and innocence to finagle his way backstage and onto tour buses to score exclusive interviews with the biggest rock stars of the ’70s:  David Bowie, Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers Band, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin and a who’s who list of others who spoke, and occasionally sang, into his ever-present cassette recorder. (Those tapes, if they still exist, could be a gold mine of material for Crowe to package.) He even lived with Glenn Frey and Don Henley when they wrote some of their biggest hits.

That chumminess with the people he was writing about and his agreement to not include some of the dirt led to a falling out with Rolling Stone for whom he had written dozens of stories. At the age of 21, he found himself living at home again with his parents. His mom loved it.  She thought Cameron could now, finally, after all the rock music nonsense, do what she had intended for his life: attend law school and continue the family legacy of attorneys.  

Instead, he enrolled undercover as a senior at a San Diego high school where he wrote about a typical American high school experience, which led to the book and film Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Crowe’s story couldn’t happen today, which is what I’m thinking as I’m reading Tom Freston’s Unplugged: Adentures from MTV to Timbuktu. It’s a memoir from one of the creators of MTV who later became CEO of MTV and Viacom. I’ll finish that one and report back next month. 

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett – 2023 – 320 pages

Moms and their adult daughters are the focus of this novel. I am neither but I enjoyed it a lot.  It’s set mostly on a northern Michigan cherry farm, is structured around the past and present lives of Lara. In her past, she had been a stage actress with notable success playing Emily, one of the leads in “Our Town.” But in the blink of an eye (which is the way it seems to happens, right?) she finds herself in her 50s, a cherry farmer, mother, wife, and long retired actress. In 2020, Lara is locked down by Covid at home on the farm with her young adult daughters. As they lie in cherry orchards during picking breaks, the daughters badger her for juicy details about their mother’s relationship with heartthrob Hollywood movie star Peter Duke. They are sure there are secrets—one daughter (not good at math, apparently)—even believes he’s her father. Decades earlier, Lara spent a summer with a not-yet-famous  Duke at a Tom Lake community theater during a production of “Our Town.” 

Patchett uses these mother-daughter conversations as ways to explore love, loss, memory, relationships, and how things we were so passionate and confident about in our young adult years are barely remembered in our old adult years. There are funny moments where her daughters refuse to consider that their mom was once their ages facing many of the same issues and urges they are. 

Mark Twain by Ron Chernow – 2025 – 1200 pages 

This, like most of Chernow’s historical non-fiction biographies (Alexander Hamilton, Grant, Washington, and many more), is an exhaustive profile, so much so that I only got about 500 pages through it before the library loan expired. I read enough to share that Clemens was a complicated, brilliant, and fascinating character who often put the “ass” in irascible. It’s a great book from a great writer and I’m back in line, but I still have another six weeks of waiting (and likely forgetting much of what I’ve already read.)

Speaking of library holds, I don’t know what calculations libraries use to determine how many copies to purchase, but I have had a hold on Carl Hiaasen’s Fever Beach since July 11th, and Libby tells me I have another two weeks of waiting.

Bob Kessler (news)

Sandwich (2024) and Wreck (2025) by Catherine Newman

A pair of delightful warm hugs about the joys and sorrows of being both a parent and someone’s child.  In the first, Rocky, a menopausal mother spends a vacation week with her husband, grown children and elderly parents – not much plot, right?  Well, it turns out you can write an amazing novel about family life without dysfunction or scandal or saccharine platitudes either. Just honesty and authenticity (with generous vacation meal portions of humor).

The sequel was every bit as enjoyable for much the same reasons: the very human experience of being human. It delves a little more into contemporary issues including navigating our far-too-confusing health care system, boardroom violence and how social media informs our interactions in the real world. It ends with the possibility of a sequel, which I’ll be first in line for.

I Speak Music: Stories from my Improbable Life (2025) by Howard Levy (2025)

Howard Levy is a musical genius, something which is undeniable upon hearing him perform. As a personal friend and student of his, I have heard some of these stories before. But it still made for a truly compelling read as the book gives a fuller context to the them and how they fit into his musical life as a whole.

Fans will love it.  I also encourage anyone to read this who wants to learn about the inner workings and outer experiences of an artist whose abilities are among the most rarified. Plus, it will probably inspire you to listen