Steve Donoghue’s posts from the original Open Letters Monthly Archives.
Some Penguin Classics don’t really seem to need updating. One such solid-looking piece of work is the translation David McDuff did for Penguin Classics of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1860 novel The House of the Dead. That translation appeared in 1985, and it – and all other translations of this particular book – are suddenly threatened […]
Read MoreIn 1503, the city of Florence commissioned two artists to paint the walls of their city hall - two men named Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. A new book assesses the after-effects of this greatest of all artistic competitions.
Read MoreOur books today are … all of them, every book I currently possess here in the quaint, white-painted confines of Hyde Cottage. Over the course of 2014 in particular, I was reminded again and again of a process every bit as mysterious and insidious as the disappearance of odd socks from the dryer: the steady, […]
Read MoreA easily-accessible new guidebook to our home solar system
Read MoreThe revamped Man of Steel embarks on a new series of adventures in Action Comics
Read MoreThe scout for a fur-trapping party in 1823 is mauled by a bear and left for dead - but he doesn't die, which is very bad news for the fur-trapping company in Michael Punke's super-effective novel
Read MoreHistorical novelist Andrew Levkoff stuffs the last installment of his "Bow of Heaven" trilogy with battles, love, loyalty betrayed, crucifixion, cross-purposes, loyalty regained, and deep reflections on what it all means.
Read MoreThis is a place for all of my writing about books.