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Open Letters Review

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Open Letters Review

Open Letters Review

An Arts & Literature Review

Open Letters Review

  • Contact & Submissions/
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December 19, 2020

The Best Books of 2020: Fiction!

December 19, 2020/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2020: Fiction!

This was a year in which made-up stories never looked so inviting. Here are the top ten recommendations for fiction published in 2020.

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December 19, 2020/ Steve Donoghue/
Literary Criticism, Stevereads
Scratching the Head of Chairman Mao, Jonathan Tel, The Boy in the Field, Margot Livesey, St. Ivo, Joanna Hershon, Small Days and Nights, Tishani Doshi, The Brutality of Fact, Larry Kramer, Love After Love, Ingrid Persaud, Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart, Jack, Marilynne Robinson, Florence Adler Swims Forever, Rachel Beanland, Actress, Anne Enrightm, Best Fiction 2020, Steve Donoghue, stevereads
December 18, 2020

The Best Books of 2020: Nonfiction!

December 18, 2020/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2020: Nonfiction!

In spite of dire global circumstances, there were several nonfiction books that warranted recommendation this year.

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December 18, 2020/ Steve Donoghue/
Stevereads
Best Books of 2020, Best Books of 2020: Nonfiction, Best Nonfiction 2020, Lurking, Jeanne McNeil, Hiding in Plain Sight, Sarah Kendzior, Pharma, Gerald Posner, Digital Cathedrals, Mark Mills, American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton, Deaths of Despair, Anne Case, Angus Deaton, Unholy, Sarah Posner, Inside Story, Martin Amis, Sovietistan, Erika Fatland, Caste, Isabel Wilkerson, Steve Donoghue, stevereads
December 17, 2020

The Worst Books of 2020: Fiction!

December 17, 2020/ Steve Donoghue
The Worst Books of 2020: Fiction!

From fuzzy navel-gazing to flinty hard solipsism, here’s the worst fiction of 2020.

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December 17, 2020/ Steve Donoghue/
Literary Criticism, Stevereads
Worst Fiction 2020, The Lying Life of Adults, Elena Ferrante, Drifts, Kate Zambreno, Death in Her Hands, Ottessa Moshfegh, Real Life, Brandon Taylor, This Mournable Body, Tsitsi Dangarembga, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, Hank Green, Homeland Elegies, Ayad Akhtar, Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami, Daddy, Emma Cline, Cleanness, Garth Greenwell, Steve Donoghue, stevereads
December 16, 2020

The Worst Books of 2020: Nonfiction!

December 16, 2020/ Steve Donoghue
The Worst Books of 2020: Nonfiction!

Dark fascistic undercurrents characterize much of the garbage-nonfiction of the year.

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December 16, 2020/ Steve Donoghue/
Stevereads
The Worst Nonfiction of 2020, Worst Nonfiction, Inspired Imperfections, Gregory Boyd, Average is the New Awesome, Samantha Matt, God, Trump, and the 2020 Election, Stephen Strang, The MAGA Doctrine, Charlie Kirk, This Is Not My Memoir, Andre Gregory, Defender in Chief, John Yoo, Gay Like Me, Richie Jackson, The Right Side of History, Ben Shapiro, Don't Burn This Book, Dave Rubin, Savage Messiah, Jordan Peterson, Jim Proser, Steve Donoghue, stevereads
December 15, 2020

The Best Books of 2020: Biography!

December 15, 2020/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2020: Biography!

The best accounts of the lives of artists, musicians, poets, and more in 2020.

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December 15, 2020/ Steve Donoghue/
Biography/Memoir, Stevereads
The Best Books of 2020, Best Biographies of 2020, biography, Child of Light, Madison Smart Bell, Robert Stone, Calder, Jed Perl, Radical Wordsworth, Jonathan Bate, The Painter of Modern Life, Stephen Heyman, Wild Thing, Jimi Hendrix, Philip Norman, Dante, John Took, The Dead Are Rising, Malcolm X, Les Payne, Tamara Payne, Cross of Snow, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nicholas Basbanes, These Fevered Days, Martha Ackmann, Red Comet, Sylvia Plath, Heather Clark, Steve Donoghue, stevereads
December 14, 2020

The Best Books of 2020: History!

December 14, 2020/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2020: History!

The pre-COVID publishing landscape was filled with a variety of history titles, and these are the best of the lot.

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December 14, 2020/ Steve Donoghue/
History, Stevereads
The Best Books of 2020, The Best Books of 2020: History, Best History 2020, history, Author in Chief, Craig Fehrman, Inky Fingers, Anthony Grafton, Presidents vs the Press, Harold Holzer, Muhammad and the Empires of Faith, Sean W. Anthony, I You We Them, Dan Gretton, The Brownsville Texas Incident of 1906, William Baker, The Equivalents, Maggie Doherty, 1774, Mary Beth Norton, Post Wall Post Square, Kristina Spohr, Square Haunting, Francesca Wade, Steve Donoghue, stevereads
December 11, 2020

The Best Books of 2020: Thrillers!

December 11, 2020/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2020: Thrillers!

The best of this year’s crop of thriller fiction!

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December 11, 2020/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction-Crime & Thrillers, Stevereads
The Best Books of 2020, Best Thrillers, The Rabbit Hunter, Lars Kepler, The Familiar Dark, Amy Engel, One Minute Out, Mark Greaney, Devolution, Max Brooks, The Empty Bed, Nina Sadowsky, Into the Fire, Gregg Hurwitz, Hide Away, Jason Pinter, House on Fire, Joseph Finder, A Beautiful Crime, Christopher Bollen, The End of October, Lawrence Wright, Steve Donoghue, stevereads
December 10, 2020

The Best Books of 2020: Mysteries!

December 10, 2020/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2020: Mysteries!

Mystery is one of the most reliable of all the escapist genres, and these were the best of 2020.

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December 10, 2020/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction-Mystery/Suspense, Stevereads
What Is Time To a Pig, John Straley, Revolver Road, Christi Daugherty, Death on Tuckernuck, Francine Mathews, The King's Beast, Elliot Pattinson, The Decent Inn of Death, Rennie Airth, Salt River, Randy Wayne White, The King's Justice, Susan Elia MacNeal, Trouble is What I do, Walter Mosely, In the Shadow of Vesuvius, Tasha Alexander, The Mitford Scandal, Jessica Fellowes, Best books of 2020, Best Mystery, Best of 2020, Steve Donoghue, stevereads
December 09, 2020

The Best Books of 2020: Science Fiction & Fantasy!

December 09, 2020/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2020: Science Fiction & Fantasy!

These are Stevereads picks for stand out science fiction & fantasy in 2020.

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December 09, 2020/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction-Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Stevereads
The Best Books of 2020, Best SFF 2020, SFF, Network Effect, Martha Wells, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, Christopher Paolini, Vagabonds, Hao Jingfang, A Bond Undone, Jin Yong, The Poet King, Ilana Myer, Mazes of Power, Juliette Wade, The Seep, Chana Porter, Shorefall, Robert Jackson Bennett, The Doors of Eden, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Piranesi, Susanna Clarke, Steve Donoghue, stevereads
December 07, 2020

The Best Books of 2020: Science!

December 07, 2020/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2020: Science!

2020 was a year in which science entered everyday life in the most apocalyptic way anybody had seen in over a century.

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December 07, 2020/ Steve Donoghue/
Science/Technology, Stevereads
The Best Books of 2020: Science, Best of 2020: Science, science, When Blood Breaks Down, Mikkael Sekeres, The World According the Physics, Jim Al-Khalil, The Contact Paradox, Keith Cooper, Sarah Scholes, They Are Already Here, SAM, Jonathan Waldman, Liquid Rules, The Internet in Everything, Laura Denardis, Dark Data, David Hand, Cryptography, Keith Martin, Mars, Stephen James O'Meara, The Hacker and the State, Ben Buchanan, Steve Donoghue, stevereads
December 05, 2020

The Best Books of 2020: Nature!

December 05, 2020/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2020: Nature!

The category of nature has become much more relevant in the year of COVID-19.

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December 05, 2020/ Steve Donoghue/
Animals & Nature, Stevereads
Best Books of 2020, Nature, nature writing, White Feathers, Bernd Heinrich, Good Boy, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Being Frog, April Pulley Sayre, Becoming Wild, Carl Safina, The Nature of Fear, The Book of Eels, Daniel Blumstein, Patrik Svensson, Owls of the Eastern Ice, Jonathan Slaght, American Birds, Andrew Rubenfeld, Terry Tempest Williams, Library of America, Cat Tale, Craig Pittman, Nature Underfoot, John Hainze, Steve Donoghue, stevereads
December 02, 2020

The Best Books of 2020: Kids and Young Adult!

December 02, 2020/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2020: Kids and Young Adult!

Reading gems for children and young adults from 2020.

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December 02, 2020/ Steve Donoghue/
Stevereads, Fiction-Young Adult
Best of 2020, Best of Lists, Young Adult Fiction, kidlit, children's books, phil stamper, Jory John, Pete Oswald, Mo O'Hara, Andrew Joyner, Parker Peevyhouse, Miranda Krestovnikoff, Jill Calder, David Nicholls, Lizi Boyd, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Steve Donoghue, stevereads
December 01, 2020

The Best Books of 2020: Reprints!

December 01, 2020/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2020: Reprints!

2020 was a good solid year for reprints.

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December 01, 2020/ Steve Donoghue/
Stevereads
Best of 2020, Best of Lists, Vivian Gornick, William Gaddis, John M. Ford, e. e. cummings, Samuel Johnson, Constance Fenimore Woolson, George Eliot, Spinoza's Ethics, Library of America, JRR Tolkien, Shirley Hazzard, Steve Donoghue, stevereads, Stevereads
December 22, 2019

The Best Books of 2019: Fiction!

December 22, 2019/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2019: Fiction!

Stevereads Best Books of 2019 closes with the very best of a strong year for fiction!

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December 22, 2019/ Steve Donoghue/
Stevereads, Literary Fiction
Best of 2019, Best of Lists, fiction, stevereads
December 21, 2019

The Best Books of 2019: Nonfiction!

December 21, 2019/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2019: Nonfiction!

The Stevereads 2019 year-end list is nearly complete—behold the year’s best nonfiction!

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December 21, 2019/ Steve Donoghue/
Stevereads
Best of 2019, Best of Lists, stevereads
December 20, 2019

The Worst Books of 2019: Nonfiction!

December 20, 2019/ Steve Donoghue
The Worst Books of 2019: Nonfiction!

In which Stevereads repeatedly asks “How on Earth does this charlatan keep getting book contracts?”

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December 20, 2019/ Steve Donoghue/
Stevereads
Worst of 2019, stevereads, nonfiction, Worst of Lists, Steve Donoghue
December 19, 2019

The Worst Books of 2019: Fiction!

December 19, 2019/ Steve Donoghue
The Worst Books of 2019: Fiction!

Stevereads makes a list of 2019’s lazy, entitled fiction.

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December 19, 2019/ Steve Donoghue/
Stevereads, Fiction-General
stevereads, Worst of 2019, fiction, Worst of Lists
December 18, 2019

The Best Books of 2019: Biography!

December 18, 2019/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2019: Biography!

2019 was a fantastic year for biography—and here’s ten reasons why!

Read More
December 18, 2019/ Steve Donoghue/
Biography/Memoir, Stevereads
biography, Best of 2019, Best of Lists, stevereads, Steve Donoghue
December 17, 2019

The Best Books of 2019: History!

December 17, 2019/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2019: History!

What’s new in History? The Best Books of 2019, of course!

Read More
December 17, 2019/ Steve Donoghue/
History, Stevereads
Best of 2019, Best of Lists, stevereads, Steve Donoghue, History
December 16, 2019

The Best Books of 2019: Nature!

December 16, 2019/ Steve Donoghue
The Best Books of 2019: Nature!

And now for the annual Stevereads year-end list for the best in nature!

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December 16, 2019/ Steve Donoghue/
Animals & Nature, Stevereads
nature, animals, stevereads, Best of 2019, Best of Lists, Steve Donoghue
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Editors:

Steve Donoghue
Sam Sacks
Britta Böhler
____________________

Eric Karl Anderson
Olive Fellows
Jack Hanson
Jennifer Helinek
Justin Hickey
Hannah Joyner
Zach Rabiroff
Jessica Tvordi

Categories:

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