Atlas of a Lost World by Craig Childs
★★★★☆ Half a lifetime ago my graduate minor was anthropology with a smattering of archaeology. It was so long ago that none of the giants whose works I read and studied are even mentioned...
Run Spot Run Book Reviews
Moonrise by Sarah Crossan
★★★★☆ Moonrise by Sarah Crossan is a heartbreaking story of life and death that reveals how death sentences affect prisoners and their families. Joe is a teenager who’s brother Ed has been sentenced to...
First Person by Richard Flanagan
★★★★☆ Novels that feature writers have become a tired trope in contemporary literature: like Chekhov’s gun, the first sign of Microsoft Office booting up in a book will invariably result in the delivery of...
Tomb Song by Julián Herbert
★★☆☆☆ Julián Herbert’s kaleidoscopic, autobiographical novel Tomb Song is a paean to his dying mother, written in what feels like a real-time bedside scrawl. “I’ve endeavored to draw a freehand portrait of my mother,”...
Voices from the Rust Belt, edited by Anne Trubek
★★★☆☆ Walter Mondale said that “Reagan’s policies are turning our industrial Midwest into a rust bowl” during a 1984 campaign rally in Cleveland. The press picked up and transformed the statement into the phrase...
The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst
★★★★☆ Spanning fifty years and three generations, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Sparsholt Affair tracks a network of artistic acquaintances through high-society London. Opening in Oxford during World War II, the novel loosely revolves around David Sparsholt, an...
The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders by Stuart Kells
★★☆☆☆ The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders disappoints. The title and the cover, a picture of the Dublin University library, suggest a look at some of the great libraries of the world. Instead, we...
The Best Cook in the World by Rick Bragg
★★★★★ Dear Rick, I have before me, waiting to be reviewed, your newest masterpiece (and, I do not use that word lightly), The Best Cook in the World. Subtitled “Tales from My Momma’s Table,”...
Folded Notes from High School by Matt Boren
★★★☆☆ Folded Notes from High School by Matt Boren is a story about teenagers in the early 90’s. Through handwritten note format, the reader follows senior Tara Maureen Murphy, as well as her boyfriend,...
