Columns

Indie Bookstore Spotlight: Dark Carnival, Berkeley, CA

September 11th, 2012

ADDRESS: 3086 Claremont Ave. Berkeley, CA 94705 HOURS: Monday - Saturday: 10:30am - 7pm, Sunday: 12pm - 6pm ON THE WEB: Site

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You’ve Probably Never Heard Of This Book: STRANGE ANGEL

September 11th, 2012

Welcome to a new feature at LitReactor, in which we introduce you, the reader, to a must-read book that is perhaps unfamiliar to you. I’d like to kick off this feature with a book I have long loved, the fascinating biography Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons by George Pendle.

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Guest Blog Post by Jack Ketchum: 'That Word'

September 10th, 2012

When Lucky McKee and I sent I’M NOT SAM to our agent, Alice Martell, it took her a few days to respond. This was not at all like her.  She’d always been johnny-on-the-spot with our stuff, bless her heart.  But you didn’t want to push her.  Hell, no.  I’d been an agent myself.  I knew that pushing your agent is as likely to get you what you want as throwing a tantrum in Times Square is likely to get you a cab.  When she finally did respond, she called and said she’d actually lost sleep over the thing.

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The Top 10 Best Closing Lines Of Novels

September 7th, 2012

Editor's Note: the following article not only contains the closing lines of ten great novels, but also delves into plots, climaxes, and endings. Though most of the books discussed were published many years ago, those who wish to be surprised be warned: here there be spoilers.

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Five of the Best Books I Ever Reread

September 7th, 2012

Too many people get so caught up in what the art critic Robert Hughes called “the shock of the new” that they miss one of my favorite aspects of reading: the shock of the old. Rereading a book I’ve loved before is like refreshing a longstanding friendship. The same pleasure returns, but something unexpected pops out – a character whose wisdom suddenly makes sense, or a once reasonable action that turns unexpectedly foolish. We change as we age, or at least we like to think we do; so do our perspectives on what we read.

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Don't Write Comics: How To Write Comics Part 4

September 6th, 2012

Don't Write Comics is a multi-part essay about writing comics, understanding what your options are, finding the right artist, and everything you need to do to get a strong comic book pitch package together. We’re in the home stretch!

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The Blagger's Guide to Gore Vidal

September 6th, 2012

To blag (v): to sound like you know what you’re talking about when you don’t The Blagger’s Guide to Literature (n): an invaluable resource for those who wish to blag about books without actually reading them.

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Storyville: Writing About Sex

September 5th, 2012

WARNING: This column will talk about sex in a graphic and frank way—so if you are underage or easily offended, please do not continue reading.

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What's Your Style?: Style Guides and How to Use Them

September 5th, 2012

What the *bleep* is a style guide? I am not saying that my high school English teachers failed me, but I arrived as a college freshman without the slightest idea what a style guide was. At matriculation, the college president handed each of us a copy of The Elements of Style. I didn’t know what it was for and therefore shelved it for nearly my entire college career.

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Library Love: Archives - The Hidden Room of Research

September 4th, 2012

If you haven’t read Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches, it’s worth a try. There are witches, vampires, and demons spelled with an “a,” not to mention a heroine who spends days researching and consulting manuscripts at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It got me thinking about rare materials and archives, and how truly foreign and inaccessible they seem. “Serious scholarship” is somehow embedded in the word “archives,” leaving them a mystery to most.

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