Columns

Just Give Me a Gift Card: A Holiday Lament for Book-Lovers

December 19th, 2013

The plight of the modern book-lover is pretty grim during the holidays. We should be rejoicing, for this is the perfect time to get free books, and yet we live in fear that under each layer of festive wrapping paper lies an embarrassment. One that we will make us cringe inwardly while we don a fake smile and thank Uncle Dave for the uninteresting, uninspired paperback he pulled off the shelf in the grocery store check-out line. So let us commiserate, fellow book-lovers, for the time of despair is nigh upon us once more.

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LURID: Macabre Christmas - M.R. James

December 18th, 2013

LURID: vivid in shocking detail; sensational, horrible in savagery or violence, or, a guide to the merits of the kind of Bad Books you never want your co-workers to know you're reading. The stories themselves do not make any very exalted claim. If any of them succeed in causing their readers to feel pleasantly uncomfortable when walking along a solitary road at nightfall, or sitting over a dying fire in the small hours, my purpose in writing them will have been attained.

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Want To Be A Better Writer? Take Acting Classes

December 18th, 2013

In previous columns, I’ve been forthright about my background in film, specifically screenwriting. But you may not know that I also studied theatre (one credit shy of a double major, in fact), and while I primarily considered myself a director, I also acted in eight plays. Without sounding too much like a blowhard, I think I did a pretty good job, and many of the lessons I learned as an actor have carried over into my fiction writing. 

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Wassailing with Wenceslas - Christmas Carol Origins

December 17th, 2013

We all know the words, but what do they really mean? Here I explain the origins of a few holiday song lyrics that have always baffled me. To start with, though, what is a "carol" to being with?

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LitReactor Staff Picks: The Best Books of 2013 (Part 1)

December 17th, 2013

Another year has come and gone. [Insert trite analogy about fluttering book pages HERE.] You know what that means, don't you? Time for a bunch of strangers to tell you what was good! And why should you care what the LitReactor writers think are the best books of the year? Trick question! You shouldn't. But what they have to say might interest you nonetheless, because they are handsome and knowledgeable and they read like the wind. So for those who care, we submit for your approval/derision some of LitReactor's favorite reads of 2013.

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The Ten Bookshots Reviews that Forced Me Yet Again into the Eager Tentacles of Amazon

December 16th, 2013

Book reviews are for me what shoe shops are to a foot fetishist: a source of terrible, yet wonderful temptation. I don’t lick the windows, but sometimes, I come close. When I set up Bookshots, I knew that posting all those reviews was only going to make that temptation stronger, but what I hadn’t counted on was just how seductively those reviews would read.

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Speak Up: On The Importance Of Reading Out Loud

December 16th, 2013

Reading out loud will make you a better writer. You probably know this already, but I just had to say it. It’s certainly an attention grabbing first sentence, isn’t it? Or, it would have been, had the 'importance of reading out loud' not been smack dab in the middle of our little headline up there. But it is. And so it is. So should you read the following out loud? There’s nothing and no one stopping you, so give it a spin. I can promise that it’ll sound okay at best and will probably act as a rather fine lesson on how not to ramble.

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10 Great Geek Gift Ideas for the Holidays

December 13th, 2013

Know some geeks? Sure you do! Here’s what to get them this year for the holidays. I even managed to include a few books!

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Culling The Classics: The Hobbit

December 13th, 2013

And what is a hobbit? Hobbits are little people, smaller than dwarfs. They love peace and quiet and good tilled earth. They dislike machines, but they are handy with tools. They are nimble but don't like to hurry. They have sharp ears and eyes. They are inclined to be fat. They wear bright colors but seldom wear shoes. They like to laugh and eat (six meals a day) and drink. They like parties and they like to give and receive presents. They inhabit a land they call The Shire, a place between the River Brandywine and the Far Downs.

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Magical Thinking and Santa Claus: How Holidays Help Create Writers

December 13th, 2013

Holiday memories are often tinged with a sense of the surreal, due in part to the strange cast of mythological figures we have come to associate them with. Rational, mentally fit adults will insist that on Christmas Eve of 1987, they really did see Santa’s boots under the crack of a bedroom door. And how can that one Easter be explained, when there were muddy rabbit prints all over the front steps?

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