This is a tricky category, of course; it wanders over its nearest borders with a good deal of recklessness. Some of this year’s top Nonfiction picks might just as easily qualify as history, for example some species of sociology, or even biography, but against its oddness I every year lay its unfailing ability to get […]

There are some years when the practitioners of fiction seem almost embarrassed by their profession – not because that profession still hasn’t turned its back on own charlatans, but rather because it sometimes seems like the reading public itself is increasingly turning its back on their profession in favor of pap. I’ve lost count of […]

This, as long-time Stevereads readers (and my long-suffering friends) may know, is the nerve center of my reading, my favorite of the genres in which I roam. More than historical fiction, which I’ve actually written (and whose self-published ranks I regularly patrol as the U.S. “Indie” Editor for the redoubtable Historical Novel Review), and more […]

It’s always when I read a lot of history (and I read more new history in 2014 than in any previous year of my life) that I wonder even more intensely than usual why anybody would ever read anything else. Here, after all, are the stories of mankind in all its unpredictable voracity, told by […]

The genre of fiction in 2014 was too anemic to warrant an Honor Roll, but this wasn’t the case at all for other genres, many of which fielded works so strongly they readily overflowed the arbitrary 10-title limit of my ‘Best’ lists. In 2014, Honor Rolls were easily possible for four or five such genres, […]

As I’ve mentioned in previous years, the health of the debut fiction field is often an excellent gauge of the health of the whole book-scene (the vigor and inventiveness of reprints being another). Hardcover books are, after all, obscenely expensive, and a first-time author is a chance, a speculation – not something an increasingly timid […]

The arithmetic that governs centennial celebrations in the Republic of Letters is schoolishly simple: you start with one (1) bromide, you multiply it by ten (10) factoids gleaned from Wikipedia, you increase that total by the number of readers who are likely to know anything at all about your subject (Arabic civilization gave us the […]

Laying out the ground rules for a new category like “Best Guilty Pleasures” almost necessitates defining such a thing as “guilty pleasures” just in general, I realize, and that’s always trickier than it seems, especially if you’re trying to avoid a lazy fall-back like Justice Potter Stewart’s offhand definition of pornography, I know it when […]

The danger of nature-writing in 2014 is glaringly obvious: nature itself is in full retreat on most parts of the planet. Species are going extinct at a rate unseen in millions of years; environments are being destroyed so quickly that the deterioration can be measured year by year and sometimes month by month; animal species […]