W. 11th & Bluff

Sarah Kendzior is a journalist writing from St. Louis, Missouri, a city firmly tucked in "flyover country," that large swathe o...

Lawrence Wright 's new book, God Save Texas , is a personal, highly anecdotal look at his home state, a place with which he clearly ha...

I cannot recommend the memoir Educated by Tara Westover highly enough. It is captivating -- practically un-put-downable -- and very well ...

Janesville, Wisconsin is two hours east of Dubuque. It's a town of about 60,000 people that has traditionally had a strong economic ba...

First let me say that The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan is not a feel-good read, but it is a very fine and important b...

The Sopranos and The Wire often butt heads for first place for best- ever TV drama. I just finished watching The Sopranos -- over sev...

In one of the pieces in novelist Zadie Smith 's new essay collection, Feel Free , she writes that knowledgeable people -- educated peo...

My first review for this blog , back in 2015, was of Celeste Ng’s debut novel, Everything I Never Told You , which impressed me with its ...

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is approaching its one-year anniversary on the New York Times bestseller list . Having just finishe...

In 2015 I chose Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates as my best book of the year . It was a difficult book to read given that it...

I know, I know, you've been wondering when a book about writing was finally going to be featured. Well, your long wait is over! The Ar...

Bruce Springsteen 's not a rocker, he's a religion -- to my mind. I worship the guy and his music, having been baptized in the chur...

The Hour of Land : A Personal Topography of America's National Parks by Terry Tempest Williams stands a very good chance of being my 2...

I was living in Maine in 2013 when the North Pond Hermit was apprehended. He was caught 29 miles from my house. His arrest was a big deal b...

Christina Baker Kline , author of the runaway bestseller Orphan Train , is back with a fine new novel, A Piece of the World . The impetus...

Barkskins , the new, multi-generational epic by Annie Proulx , won't be for everyone. For one thing, it's over 700 pages long and co...

It's hard to do justice to Colson Whitehead 's The Underground Railroad in a quick review. I was leery of reading it because I ...

Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler is not the sort of book I normally read, but my daughter works in the restaurant business, so we decided t...

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead may be the best book I read in 2016. I read it (twice!), just after the unsavory election season ...

The Painter by Peter Heller , the second novel by the author of the highly acclaimed debut novel The Dog Stars , was the library's ad...