Steve Donoghue recommendations - select fiction Public

Created by ilk

Who is Steve Donoghue?

Donoghue is a professional book critic and prominent Booktuber from Boston, USA. He brings decades of reading experience to bear in his Youtube channel[1], Steve Donoghue, and his review portal, Open Letters Review[2]

There are dozens of Youtubers doing this. Why should I listen to him?

He reads deeper and wider than most of them combined, across fiction and non-fiction, and explains what's great about particular books. Think of him as a human book reccommendation algorithm who sometimes yells at clouds and gets unhygienically affectionate with his pet terrier.

What's the origin of this list? Can I contribute to it?

They're sourced selectively from numerous YT channel updates posted since 2017. The channel is approaching 10,000 videos, so it's not the work of one fan alone. It's an open list for that reason.

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  1. The Dirty Dust by ,

    No rating

    Added by ilk

  2. Heart of Darkness by 

    Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad. It tells the story of Charles Marlow, a …

    ilk says:

    'Dark and sticky. It will remain with you. An odd, imperfect, uneven book about power and consumption and obsession.' (100 Greatest Books of All Time! 100 - 91)

    Added by ilk

  3. GERMINAL; TRANS. BY ROGER PEARSON. by  (PENGUIN CLASSICS)

    ilk says:

    'A doomed loved story, and a story about disadvtanged workers in a mine. He brings you right into their world [...] He never wrote anything more effective than this' (100 Greatest Books of All Time! 100 - 91)

    Added by ilk

  4. The Once and Future King by 

    T. H. White's modern classic about King Arthur. This particular edition may have been published in Russia, but it is …

    ilk says:

    'More than an Arthurian retelling. Supersedes any genre description. A meditation on the mythologies we all use to get through our lives.' (100 Greatest Books of All Time! 90 - 81)

    Added by ilk

  5. Riddley Walker by ,

    Engrossing post apocalyptic book that told entirely in a vividly degenerated post-English that the reader is left to decipher as …

    ilk says:

    'A novel in which the apocalypse happened a long time ago, and everyone's forgotten about it. Written in a weird pidgin English [...] Up to the reader to make sense of the world's weird social customs and physical localities.' (A Post-Apocalyptic Starter Kit!)

    Added by ilk

  6. M : Son of the Century by ,

    No rating

    ilk says:

    'Takes a historical figure (Benito Mussolini) and makes him a three-dimensional protagonist [...] And it's fantastic' (Historical Fiction Master List!)

    Added by ilk

  7. CAL by 

    No rating

    ilk says:

    'A young man during the Troubles, faced with life choices that are all bad [...] The last 30 pages are a slalom ride.' (My Top 5 Irish Novels!)

    Added by ilk

  8. Ducks, Newburyport by 

    No rating

    ilk says:

    'A novel about nothing. The unmedicated obsessiveness that guides the book fills it with a strange energy.' (Top 10 Contemporary Classics You MUST Read!)

    Added by ilk

  9. Viriconium by 

    ilk says:

    'About a world so old it has outlived even time. A [fantasy] favorite of mine.' The Essentials of Fantasy Literature!

    Added by ilk

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