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Mitt Romney was on CNN not long ago defending the claims in his campaign ads — "We've been absolutely spot on," he said. Politics aside, the expression had me doing an audible roll of my eyes. I've always associated "spot on" with the type of Englishman who's played by Terry-Thomas or John Cleese, someone who pronounces "yes" and "ears" in the same way — "eeahzz." It shows up when people do send-ups of plummy British speech. "I say — spot on, old chap!"

But that wasn't really fair to Romney. Actually, "spot on" doesn't sound snooty when it's used as an adjective meaning accurate or on-target, as in "a spot-on impersonation." And it has become more common in American speech than it was even 10 years ago, when it made a notable appearance in a 2003 episode of The Wire. Detective Jimmy McNulty is posing as an English businessman in order to bust a Baltimore brothel. He speaks in a comically bad English accent, the inside joke being that McNulty was actually played by the English actor Dominic West. Before he goes in, his boss Lt. Daniels and Assistant DA Rhonda Pearlman are prepping him for his role and giving him the signal to have them come in to make the arrests:

Mention the name Rick Riordan to adults, and they might say, "Huh?" But kids? They know. Riordan has been burning up the best-seller lists with three different series of books that all feature modern-day kids entangled in the lives of ancient gods. The Red Pyramid — the November pick of NPR's Backseat Book Club — features a brother and sister who have no idea they are descended from age-old sorcerers until their archaeologist father accidentally unleashes ancient gods into modern society.

Dangerous? Absolutely. But also very cool.

If you have kids, then you know there's something almost magical when they reach the age when they begin to tackle mythology in school. The world of Greek, Roman, Norse and Egyptian gods, goddesses and heroes is intoxicating for students. The special powers. The cylindrical family trees. The rivalries. The vanities. The names that march across the tongue like Roman armies. It really is delicious stuff. If you want proof, just look at a kid's notebook when they're in a mythology unit — the doodles and drawings in the margins reveal just how deep the obsession goes.

Riordan certainly knows how mythology can cast a spell over young people. Before he became a best-selling author, he was a schoolteacher, and — not surprisingly — mythology was one of his favorite subjects to teach. All of his best-selling series (the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, the Heroes of Olympus series and The Kane Chronicles) follow a similar pattern: A modern-day preteen must complete a difficult mission, or the world will descend into complete chaos. Along the way, they usually discover special powers, overcome big fears and fulfill a destiny etched in stone hundreds of years ago.

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Rick Riordan lives in San Antonio with his wife and two sons. You can submit your questions for him here.

Billboards declaring "Voter Fraud is a Felony" were recently taken down in some urban Ohio and Wisconsin areas. But not before civil rights groups said they could intimidate minority voters and decrease turnout. Host Michel Martin talks with WCPN reporter Brian Bull about the billboards, who paid for them, and concerns about their lasting impact.

Richard Russo sits in his elderly mother's home, holding her hand. She's just been diagnosed with dementia, one more illness to add to the long list of ailments she's been battling for years. She wonders aloud whether she'll ever be able to read again, plainly scared at the prospect of a life without her favorite hobby. She takes a look around her small apartment, and tells her son that she hates it.

"I just wish you could be happy, Mom," he says, heartbroken. "I used to be," she responds. "I know you don't believe that, but I was."

It's the most utterly melancholy moment in a memoir full of them, a book in search of a happy ending that will never come. There are instances of joy in Richard Russo's Elsewhere, but they are rare and tempered by the knowledge that sometimes things just don't get better. This story is a tragedy, and it is as unrelentingly sad as it is beautiful.

Elsewhere chronicles Russo's relationship with his mother from his childhood in the decaying mill town of Gloversville, N.Y., to her death decades later, after she's lived through countless unhappy years, wracked by untreated and severe mental illness. Russo's mother, unable to hold down a job and stuck in a long spiral of despair, considered him her "rock" and followed him and his family from town to town. The book is less a memoir than, in Russo's words, "a story of intersections: of place and time, of private and public, of linked destinies and flawed devotion."

That description could fit any of Russo's novels as well, and the prose and depth of feeling that made those books so unforgettable are unmistakably present in Elsewhere. Those who have read Nobody's Fool will recognize Gloversville as the inspiration for North Bath, all dying elm trees, dilapidated storefronts, and blue-collar workers who refuse to yield to the slow death of the American manufacturing industry. Russo writes in the same steadfastly plainspoken tone that he's always employed — in one passage unlikely to go over well in towns like, say, Iowa City, he slams "university-trained writers" who "consider plot a dirty word" and who indulge in "literary pretension."

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