The Second City

 Book 11 of my 2026 Reading Challenge

read from January 10 - 19

The Second City: The Essentially Accurate History

published 2019

2 stars

This oversized book felt cumbersome but read quickly.  I read it for a day, didn't pick it up again for about a week, and then finished it in a day.

The formatting was rough for me in the first few chapters.  Throughout the whole book there are lots of sidebars and text boxes highlighting specific people but in the first chapter it would be regular text stopping in the middle of a sentence, turning the page to find a page with completely random info, turning the page and completing the sentence.  The first time it happened I thought I had missing pages because it was so jarring.  It happened multiple times so by the time I got to the second chapter I went through and read all the extra stuff first and then went back and read the text of the actual chapter.  It settled down and was less of an issue after the first few chapters but didn't start off on the right foot.

The content was fine but I would've liked a little more finesse in the storytelling and not so much "this person said this", a new person started, "this person said this", etc.

I considered rating it a neutral 3 stars because a bigger fan might find this more interesting but decided on 2 because of the issues mentioned above.

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Ways This Book Met my 2026 Reading Goals:

- 11th book read in 2026 (my goal is 100)

- A book I received for Christmas 2025 (my goal is to read all my Christmas 2025 books by the end of 2026)

- A book I own that is leaving my house for a new reader to find (my goal is to declutter and make progress on whittling down my shelves/boxes of books in my house)