(Collage by Guido Mendez)

Top shelf

They were the best of spines.

In July, we asked readers to scour their libraries for raw materials to build a story out of books. Eighty of you answered the call. And the winners are ... Vincent Tabor, MBA’88, whose taut tale of natural disaster took top honors, and Laura Oppenheimer, AB’06, whose lament for a meal gone wrong garnered second place. The other five entries below received honorable mentions.

First Place

Tornado Alert! / The Sound and the Fury / Little House on the Prairie / Gone with the Wind

Second Place

The Year of Eating Dangerously / It Must’ve Been Something I Ate / The Restaurant at the End of the Universe / The $64 Tomato / I Was Told There’d be Cake / Woe Is I / Atonement

Honorable Mentions

The End of Education / Why Johnny Can’t Concentrate / Boys & Girls / Attention Deficit Disorders / Loneliness / Sexuality / None of the Above / Algebra / The People Shall Judge / The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate / On Bullshit / Our Story Begins / Behind the Beautiful Forevers / Speak, Memory / Beautiful Lofty People / To Be in the Number / All the Little Live Things / Lying Awake / Recalculating / What Are People for? / Love and Summer / A Kind of Flying / The Dead and the Living / Passing Through / Heaven and Earth / Looking for Luck / Dear Ghosts, / Whispering to Fool the Wind / You Come Too / Cats Cats Cats / Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight / West with the Night / Into Thin Air / East of the Sun and West of the Moon / Come to the City / Where Angels Fear to Tread / The Places in Between / The Lost Continent / Where the Wild Things Are / The Dragons of Eden / The Snow Leopard.

View all of the contest entries—along with any notes—on our Facebook page.