If you enjoy books about cemeteries (and I do, honestly!), you’ll love "Chicago Eternal" by Larry Broutman. The book is a beautiful coffee-table-style volume on heavy paper stock with photographs—mostly in color—of impressive monuments in the city’s finest historic graveyards. The visuals are accompanied by well-researched information on the individuals and families represented.

Some of the city’s permanent “residents” are well known. Famous names include Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens, Oscar F. Mayer of meat-packing fame, and Cyrus Hall McCormick, inventor of a reaper that revolutionized agriculture in the 1800s. Others are not celebrated but passed away as young children or have an especially striking gravestone.

The book even comes with 3-D paper glasses that add to the fun. So sit back and enjoy!

No doubt you've experienced something similar in books, movies, novels–whatever you use as an excuse to get away, to suspend reality. Literary characters, like these projections, draw you in and cultivate feelings of friendship on your part. Although, no matter how much you learn about them, how much time you spend with them–how far you can see into their thoughts and words, how they interact with others, their looks, what they wear–they will never, ever know you.