On Trails by Robert Moor
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Robert Moor opens his book On Trails by recalling the five months he spent walking the Appalachian Trail (AT) from Georgia to Maine. His timing was unidyllic as that...
Run Spot Run Book Reviews
Unforbidden Pleasures by Adam Phillips
★☆☆☆☆ Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips asks us to cast aside our desire for the forbidden and taboo, in favor of the society-approved pleasures readily available to us. His book Unforbidden Pleasures is a wandering exploration...
Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
★★★☆☆ Perhaps Haruki Murakami’s greatest strength is his familiarity. With each new novel he transports his readers through the the same mirror into a realm of gentle magical realism, to parallel worlds that exist...
Before We Sleep by Jeffrey Lent
★★★★☆ Little kids ask, “Why?” Teenagers also question, but the difference is that teenagers often try to find the answers themselves. Katey Snow is 17 years old, about to leave home for college in...
The Golem’s Mighty Swing by James Sturm
★★★★☆ Originally published in 2001, James Sturm’s The Golem’s Mighty Swing is a masterful but fleeting confluence of comics and American history, beautifully drawn in clean inky lines and paced with cinematic control. This...
Somebody With a Little Hammer by Mary Gaitskill
★★★☆☆ An uneven collection of essays, criticism and reviews, Mary Gaitskill’s Somebody With a Little Hammer is as frustrating as it is inspiring. Despite a handful of standout, excellent pieces, much of the work...
If I Could Tell You by Elizabeth Wilhide
★★★☆☆ If I Could Tell You by Elizabeth Wilhide seemed to be the perfect book: a romantic story that’s set in England during World War I, that stars a brave, young woman, and is written...
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
★★★★☆ In the vast world of science fiction, there is a frequent and frequently unfair desire to contextualize an individual work with comparables within its own genre. Unique voices are met with resistance, their...
Arthur and Sherlock by Michael Sims
★★★★☆ Why should there be yet another book written about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes? There have been so many explorations of their real and imagined (and intertwined) lives that it seems...
