The White Card by Claudia Rankine
★★★★★ It’s not news that the art industry has a problem with its white-maleness — museums are grappling with these issues and mounting some of their best and most diverse shows in recent years...
Run Spot Run Book Reviews
Here Lies Daniel Tate by Cristin Terrill
★★★★★ Here Lies Daniel Tate by Cristin Terrill is the story of a boy fighting for survival and discovering who he wants to be. The novel begins with the narrator refusing to give his...
Nothing but the Night by John Williams
★★★☆☆ Written in 1948 while the author was stationed in Burma, Nothing but the Night is a curious early work by celebrated American novelist John Williams (1922-1994). The novella investigates the haunted past of...
We Are Not Refugees: True Stories of the Displaced by Agus Morales
★★★★★ Mass migration is in the news almost daily, but what’s lost in stark headlines and impassioned tweets is the human element. But people don’t leave their homes or their countries, often for good,...
Golden State by Ben H. Winters
★★☆☆☆ Unwarranted comparisons to 1984 should be punished with the severity of Orwellian dictatorships. Ben H. Winters really wants his novel Golden State to land among the authoritarian greats, but he spends too much...
We Begin in Gladness by Craig Morgan Teicher
★★★★☆ Can any book, especially one as succinct (befitting a poet) as this one, explain the myriad factors that spark the production of a poem? Regardless of the precipitating factors, the key element, according...
Milkman by Anna Burns
★★★☆☆ Compellingly anxious and paranoid, Anna Burns’ Milkman (winner of the 2018 Booker Prize) is a timely, rambling novel set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Burns’ narrator is a thoughtful eighteen-year-old woman with a...
Trump Sky Alpha by Mark Doten
★★★★☆ Mark Doten’s Trump Sky Alpha is one of few recent novels with something salient to portray about our current Trump era. Compare this to last year’s Gary Shteyngart novel Lake Success, which, while...
Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley
★★★★☆ Step aside for a moment, Easy Rawlings: there is a new gumshoe in town, and he is out to do the right thing even if it might involve doing the wrong thing. Joe...
