Columns

New Release Roundup: Recommendations for July 2012

July 2nd, 2012

Every month I'll be toiling in the dank, dark mines of literary obscurity, scouring the catalogues of every major publisher to bring the LitReactor faithful a few choice titles hitting the shelves. The following is a brief look at what's worth checking out in July. Full disclosure: unless otherwise noted, none of the below books have been reviewed by myself or other LitReactor staff. These are just a few recommendations based on publisher's notes and my own opinions. Without further ado:

Read Column →

UPDATED WITH WINNER: LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown: June Edition

June 29th, 2012

Flash fiction: A style of fictional literature marked by extreme brevity. How This Works We give you something. It could be a picture or an idea or a sentence. You write a flash fiction piece, using the thing we gave you as inspiration. Put your entry in the comments section. One winner will be picked, and awarded a prize.

Read Column →

What The Dark Knight Can Learn From The Avengers

June 29th, 2012

It’s been a few months since The Avengers claimed ultimate victory as the biggest superhero movie ever. As it has been dissected by critics, bloggers, fanboys, and studio execs seeking the secrets of its success, there have been numerous comparisons, mostly unfavorable, to that other superhero franchise. Everyone wants to know if Batman can beat the Avengers, but the question I’m more interested in is what can he learn from them.

Read Column →

Scandalous! Is Edward Rochester A Feminist?

June 29th, 2012

Welcome to a new column here at LitReactor, in which I will dauntlessly voice an unpopular opinion about a beloved novel. Today I'll speak on a topic near and dear to my heart - the feminist subtext lying within Jane Eyre's Edward Rochester.

Read Column →

Fifty Shades of Pay: A Failed Attempt To Get Rich By Writing Erotica

June 28th, 2012

My mother has recently begun urging me to read some erotica, and the full strangeness of this only hits me as I’m typing this sentence. Let me explain: as one of those writer types, one must try to keep abreast of the literary scene, yes? And to eschew genre or mass-market pulp, the kind that you and I (O intrepid bastions of Apollo’s Quill!) wouldn’t read unless for the high sport of mockery, must be taken into account. After all, can we actually just read Proust and Stein every single day?

Read Column →

YA Superstar: John Green

June 28th, 2012

If you stopped a random person on the street and asked him or her to name a YA author, you'd mostly likely get a response of "J.K. Rowling" or "Stephenie Meyer." Actually, you're most likely to get no response at all, since some people don't know what YA stands for, and others don't talk to strangers because of those scary PSAs from the '80s with men in trench coats driving sketchy vans.

Read Column →

Passing Strange: 15 Of The Most Bizarre Author Deaths On Record

June 27th, 2012

Why go gently into that good night like a sucker when you can go out in a Bon Jovian blaze of glory and be remembered forever? If you're a 16th century poet or an obscure opera critic, it might be your only chance at leaving a lasting legacy. And if you're already a canonical author, it doesn't hurt your street cred if you die in a fiery car wreck and people blame the KGB.

Read Column →

Writing In Parallel

June 27th, 2012

One of the biggest mistakes I see in first drafts — both among beginning writers who don’t know any better and experienced writers who are simply bad at editing themselves — is a proclivity to produce lopsided sentences.

Read Column →

Book vs. Film vs. Mini Series: The Shining

June 26th, 2012

Stephen King’s third novel, The Shining, was conceived after a late–season visit to The Stanley Hotel in Colorado.  King and his wife found themselves in a near-empty building, the only diners in the dining room, the only footsteps echoing down the corridors, the only ones riding the elevator.  After King took a solo turn around the empty hotel and had a long chat with the bartender, Grady, inspiration wasn’t far from knocking.  Most people experience a resort hotel in peak season, thronged with staff and ot

Read Column →

The Building of Worlds

June 26th, 2012

Fantasy fiction, like its sibling Science Fiction, often depends on worldbuilding to be successful. A contemporary tale that takes place in our world depends on our sense of being alive in this present to give us grounding. But secondary worlds often demand explanation - whether it’s how a particular history developed, what kind of creatures exist in the world, what the physics are, whether magic exists and how it works, and so on and so on.

Read Column →