Julia Keller

We like to think of ourselves as stable, mature, responsible adults, but let's face it: When it comes to books, we're just like babbling infants in a crib. Dangle a...

Words are like "American Idol" contestants: You can't predict which ones are going to break out and become stars. A word's sudden popularity, after all, arises like a vaporous tendril...

"The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation" (Random House), by Elizabeth Berg. A collection of charming stories by the Oak Park resident who, book...

For almost two decades he has written a twice-a-week, this-'n'-that column in the Boston Globe. His work is the verbal equivalent of an arched eyebrow: funny, urbane and laced with...

This is a Chicago story. It could not have happened in New York. It could only have happened in Chicago, a city that was, at the time our story begins...

The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn By Louisa Gilder Knopf, 336 pages, $27.50 They deal with stars and planets and galaxies, so it's easy to think that...

The unofficial rule goes like this: As long as at least one leftover turkey leg lurks somewhere in the fridge, Thanksgiving isn't over. It's still appropriate to speak -- without...

He's rumpled and churlish -- but somehow irresistible too. Horace Rumpole, the venerable barrister who moves through more than a dozen works by John Mortimer with characteristic bluster, self-regard and...

Suddenly, Australia is hot. Sizzling hot. As the film "Australia" opened in theaters last week, I finished "The Broken Shore," a brooding thriller by veteran Australian crime writer Peter Temple,...

You've just gotta read this As long as you're in your reading chair And the cushions are properly FLUFFED With the tea set ARRANGED on the table And the teacup's...