Steve Donoghue’s posts from the original Open Letters Monthly Archives.
Our book today is a doozy, a true and unexpected delight: Barnes & Noble’s latest addition to their sterling, mouth-watering series of leatherbound classics is a Star Trek volume! Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the original TV show’s appearance (an anniversary Paramount Pictures has decided to honor by, astonishingly, shamefully, mostly ignoring […]
Read MoreComics this week contained several bombshells and big events, but the one that drew my attention the most was the first issue of DC Comics’ new “Rebirth” summer event series, and it drew my attention not just because of the fan reactions popping up all over the nerdy end of the blogosphere but also because […]
Read MoreSome of Johann Sebastian Bach's most glorious music is also some of the most intimidating to modern audiences; a new book introduces readers to the masses and oratorios of the master.
Read MoreThe familiar story of the Spartacus rebellion gets a lavish new telling
Read MoreA lively account of life on the front lines in the fight against the world's worst diseases.
Read MoreA terrific ten-year-old noir novel is given a new paperback edition on the occasion of its translation to the Hollywood screen.
Read MoreHe helped to create some of the staple characters of the comic book world, and yet he's unknown outside the industry. A spirited biography tells the story of Otto Binder.
Read MoreA violent, desolate stretch of the English coastline forms the setting for Andrew Michael Hurley's much-heralded debut novel
Read MoreI’ve come to expect jaw-dropping moments in paleo-conservative magazines like The Weekly Standard, magazines that mistake blind cultural atavism for actual conservatism and end up actively praising a wide array of things any 1960 conservative would have considered appalling. But every so often, I stumble across a true whopper neatly folded into something as seemingly […]
Read MoreIt would surely have dumbfounded the Steve from 10 years ago, but nevertheless: I’ve largely succeeded in weening myself from buying weekly comics. It’s not quite the impressive act of will that it might sound, mainly because my two age-old superhero comic book companies, Marvel and DC, have done their part recently by putting out […]
Read MoreA young woman's diary of her friendship with Anton Chekhov raises the tantalizing possibility of a long-lost work by the master.
Read MoreOur book today is from an old friend of ours here at Stevereads, the great, garrulous naturalist William Beebe, the friendly world wanderer and author of, among many other books, Galapagos: World’s End. This book is a wonderful thing from 1925 called Jungle Days, a breezy, episodic account of various journeys the author took in […]
Read MoreRick Campbell's new novel features a fight to the death deep under the Arctic ice
Read MoreIn Joe Hill's new novel, a plague of spontaneous combustion is sweeping the world ...
Read MoreOur book today is a pure beauty of critical prose: Nothing If Not Critical by the late, great Robert Hughes, which I recently found at the Brattle Bookshop in a 1990 UK trade paperback and burrowed into before I’d even made it all the way back home. The book reprints critical essays and reviews Hughes […]
Read MoreA lean and fast-paced new biography tells the story of the legendary sultan who took Jerusalem from the Crusaders
Read MoreA stirring, eloquent new book makes a wide-ranging case for the brainpower of birds
Read MoreA provocative new book sets out to study the faith of one of the country's most famous atheists
Read MoreOur book today is the latest from a long-time favorite here on Stevereads: it’s One Wild Bird at a Time by the great bird specialist and nature-writer Bernd Heinrich, a slim volume (filled, as always, with the author’s own illustrations) in which he meditates on one kind of bird per chapter in a warm and […]
Read MoreA clear-eyed look at the disaffected youth of India
Read MoreThis is a place for all of my writing about books.