Steve Donoghue’s posts from the original Open Letters Monthly Archives.
Fiction was remarkable in 2013 for the way it almost constantly awarded craft. This isn’t always the case; it frequently happens that raw, relatively untested talent – or drastically but well-controlled stylistic gambles – will propel a book into a firmament more typically occupied by older stars. But this year not only are many of [...]
Read MoreA legendary editor assembles the leading lights of science fiction for the new century - he hopes.
Read MoreOne of the most contemptible traits running through the Worst Nonfiction list this year, out of a very large number of such contemptible traits, was the reek of undisguised cash-grabbing cynicism that characterizes almost all of it. Cynicism itself is nothing new to these kinds of books, designed as they are for mass distribution to [...]
Read MoreA book-critic friend of mine, contemplating the horrifying object in question, drawled, “You don’t really read a new Amy Tan.” He was right, of course, in all his unspoken implications (including the least-spoken of all, namely that you don’t really write such a line in your review either, especially if Tan’s publishers are paying $15, [...]
Read MoreNever was an Honor Roll more badly needed than in the sprawling catch-all that is Best Nonfiction! That catch-all is where I did an enormous chunk of my reading in 2013, which made the task of fitting all my favorites into one skimpy 10-item list a nightmare. So it’s a bit of a relief to [...]
Read MoreHonor Rolls have been a godsend for me, mainly because that sidereal drift of estimation I mentioned last time applies to all kinds of books, and more to fiction than anything else. At some point in the course of 2013, virtually all of these Honor Roll books spent some time on my Best list, only [...]
Read MoreAs long-time Stevereads readers may recall, I like biography just a bit more than I like any other kind of writing. Something about the way it combines the sweep of history and the narrative of fiction tends to work on me even when the specific volume in question is less than stellar. And 2013 provided [...]
Read MoreA quick-paced new history of not just of the city of Venice but of the remarkable men and women who strutted across its stage during the long centuries of its life
Read MoreHistory, too, was thriving in 2013, although I saw the usual reasons for concern – mainly two: the continued rise of imbecilic cardboard garbage calling itself history and increasingly mistaken as such even in respected venues, and the (connected, obviously?) decreasing historical competence among the average citizens of the Republic of Letters. In a word: [...]
Read More“One of the grim pleasures of reading collected letters,” Wilfrid Sheed, a connoisseur of grim pleasures, once wrote, “comes in watching a style being built year by year until it resembles a model prison, with the writer on the inside. ” 2013 saw an exceptionally strong showing of such prisons, so for the first time [...]
Read MoreA life-long love of the Classics is distilled into a new translation of Homer's Iliad
Read MoreAnother sub-genre that’s pleased me greatly for a great deal of my reading life has likewise been unjustly neglected here in my year-end summings-up, despite how much I invariably write about it during the year itself: my dear Penny Press, the pieces poor paid hacks (of various pedigrees) create for the ravening maw of newspapers, [...]
Read MoreFor 2013′s list I thought it would be simple justice finally to include a genre I’m unashamed to admit has always brought me great reading pleasure (or has, at least, since the redoubtable Rebekah Bradford convinced me to abandon my provincial snobbery on the subject): romance novels! Not “romance novels ironically” or “romance novels as [...]
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Read MoreTheres a certain pleasing fluidity to these annual lists, reflecting the fluidity of the publishing landscape. One year there’s an abundance of excellent nature books or books about Venice, and the next year the abundance has shifted to other subjects. A year-end list that held mechanically to all its previous iterations would be a morbid [...]
Read MoreA life-long writer and editor looks back on his life
Read MoreThere are hundreds of thousands of new books published in the United States every year – probably a little over 300,000 in 2013, for instance, although exact figures are impossible to determine – and that places a great immovable weight on the head of any serious reader. That weight is always there, pressing down, and [...]
Read MoreIt’s that time again, book-readers young and old: this week we begin that annual Gotterdammerung, the Stevereads Best – and Worst – Books of the Year! Starting tomorrow, the books of 2013 get a Final Judgement like they’ll get nowhere else, so gird yourselves!
Read MoreOur book today is From the Holy Mountain, a 1997 mixture of history and travelogue by Scottish writer William Dalrymple, recently – and very deservedly – praised for his truly important 2012 book Return of a King, about the tangled history of Afghanistan. In this earlier work, he embarks on a journey of five months [...]
Read MoreOne of the first volumes of a new color reprint series from Marvel Comics features some high-flying adventures by the summer's superhero star, the mighty Thor!
Read MoreThis is a place for all of my writing about books.