Steve Donoghue’s posts from the original Open Letters Monthly Archives.
Our book today is Donald Sobol’s 1963 classic Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective, which introduced Sobol’s immortal character, 10-year-old super-sleuth Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown, to legions of young people who until they read the book had no idea they liked reading at all – and then found they loved it. Our diminutive hero – “a complete library [...]
Read MoreThe revered (and reviled) Superman director Richard Donner co-writes an epic story from the Man of Steel's past
Read MoreBen Jonson said that the once wealthy and acclaimed Edmund Spenser died "for want of bread"; a new biography tries to disentangle myth from fact, and to make the case for the great poet's relevance today
Read MoreIn the night sky over Occupied France, two young men met in combat - this remarkable book tells their stories.
Read More"I paint, I work, I am free of thought" said Cezanne, and his thoughtless paintings changed art forever. A cinematic new biography explores the man's life and art.
Read MoreThe Best Book … of Venice: Monumental Venice by Jacques Boulay (photos) & Jean-Philippe Follet (text) The Best Reprint: Tottel’s Miscellany, edited by Amanda Holton The Best Nature Book: The Last Walk by Jessica Pierce The Best Fiction Debut: The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu The Best Biography: Clover Adams by [...]
Read MoreOn a lonely icebound fjord, the young daughter of a Viking king must solve a series of crimes - and find her destiny
Read MoreAmbition could well be the watch-word of this year’s best nonfiction: big books on big subjects predominate our list, much to the delight of grown-up readers such as myself. True, there will always be flyweight garbage (“Poo-Poo: A Cultural History,” etc.), but as long as we’ve got books like this top 10, we’ll be OK [...]
Read MorePlenty of slim fiction was published in 2012, and a higher-than-normal percentage of it was crap; by some unknown algebra, the balance of the fictional equation this year tipped to fat, ambitious novels, almost a defiant snoot-cocking to those nabobs of negativity who claim the Internet is destroying the reader’s ability to concentrate. This was [...]
Read MoreAs bad as this year’s Worst Fiction entries were, the Worst Nonfiction entries bothered me more, probably because fiction is so inherently variable that it’s hard to hold even its worst excesses against it for long (I have no doubt that some of the authors on that Worst Fiction list will be on future Best [...]
Read MoreThe year’s fiction had glorious monuments of quality and daring (you’ll have to wait a couple of days to read about them here), but they were islands in a flood-tide of timidity and preachy topicality (liberally mixed with some Terror Wars sanctimony). In some years, my main complaint has been that novelists disdainfully, arrogantly abandoned [...]
Read MoreIt was a spotty year for another of my favorite genres, history (books, that is – actual history broke somewhat on the side of the good guys, for a change), but there were unmistakable highlights, the top ten of which were these: 10. The Twilight War by David Crist – In this muscular, incredibly readable, and [...]
Read MoreAs many of you know, I love the genre of biography just a bit more than I do any other genre – at its best, it carries the heft of history, the electric charge of fiction, and the propulsive fascination of mystery (not to mention the bizarre mating-rituals of memoirs). 2012 saw a wet many [...]
Read MoreAnother yardstick useful in measuring the strength of publishing is the health of its new genes. I have a large soft spot for debut novels (having yanked more than my fair share of them out of talented young authors who fought me tooth and nail the whole time), and 2012 was an exciting, encouraging year [...]
Read MoreThe news of the world has never shown a grimmer picture of the war on Nature than we saw in 2012 (compensated only slightly by Nature’s increasing proclivity to make war on us), but the superheated, winterless, waterless blight hasn’t been reflected in the beauty of nature-related books hitting stores. Here are the 10 best [...]
Read MoreDespite the usual electronics-fuelled panic about the death of print, print is thriving – as can be seen by one of the surest indices of publishing vigor: non-academic reprints for the so-called common reader. 2012 was a very good year for such reprints, some of which (see #7, for instance) have a kind of financial [...]
Read MoreHe put Christianity on the road to world domination - and he did a lot of other horrid things as well. He's Constantine the Great, and he's got a new biographer
Read More2012 was swamped by the customary deluge of Venice-books, of course. It’s estimated that somewhere around 350,000 books were published in English in the last twelve months, and roughly 315,000 of them were about Venice, whose fourteen streets and ten canals hosted approximately 475 billion overfed tourists in 2012. Since all of those tourists were [...]
Read MoreThe end of the year is at last in sight, and you all know what that means: yes, the long, patient wait at the door is almost over. That squirrelly institution of the book world, the Stevereads Best – and Worst! – Books of the Year is almost upon us yet again! Looking back at [...]
Read MoreIn a rip-snorting new blood-and-swash history of the War of 1812, the men and their fighting ships take center stage
Read MoreThis is a place for all of my writing about books.