Totem - Jo Baring

I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher. One of my goals this year has been to read more non-fiction. It's actually one of my goals every year, and every year I fail at it, so I was grateful when the team at Canongate sent me a copy of Totem by Jo Baring. It's billed as an accessible, story-led journey into the heart of sculpture, and it's out now in the UK, with a US release following on November 3rd. I should say up front that I don't really know how to review non-fiction. I don't read enough of it to know what I'm supposed to be assessing, or what "working" even looks like for a book like this. So take everything that follows with that caveat attached. I enjoyed reading Totem, but I didn't get quite as much out of it as I'd hoped, and I can't really tell you whether that's a flaw in the book or a flaw in my own expectations going in. Baring says in the introduction that this isn't meant to be a history of sculpture. Instead it's a journey meant to "illuminate…