Columns

10 Places We Read (and Why We Read There)

July 16th, 2013

Hi there, my name’s Ben. I’m one of the new guys here at LitReactor. For my first article I wanted to conjure up a subject that’d aim for the personal, but also strike up a great conversation within the community here, as it pertains to all of us readers. The subject in focus herein is one I’ve often thought about, occasionally talked about, and never once written about.

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Why The F*ck Aren't You Reading Sara Gran?

July 15th, 2013

Why The F*ck Aren't You Reading? is a new feature where the columnist spotlights a writer who has a dedicated following and is well known within the writing community, but hasn't achieved the elephant-in-the-room style success of a Stephen King or Gillian Flynn—But they deserve to, dammit! Hopefully the column will help gain the author featured a few more well deserved readers. Let’s get a quick show of hands: How many of you read Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys growing up?

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7 Horrifying Ailments Named After Literary Characters

July 15th, 2013

Photo by Rob Krause

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Magna Monstra: 10 Giant Monsters of Fantasy

July 12th, 2013

Monsters. They’re one of the greatest parts of Fantasy, one of the features of the genre. Monsters are, simply put, freaking cool. Anyone who ever cracked open a Monster Manual (or perhaps the Fiend Folio) and flipped through its pages knows what I mean. The best monsters are powerful, scary, and just plain weird.

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Choose Your New Adventure: The Resurgence of Interactive Storytelling

July 12th, 2013

True story: About ten years ago, a friend and I were talking about how to get out of a job we both hated (we were destined for great things and we knew it!) and one of us said we should launch a series of Choose Your Own Adventure type books, but for adults. We discussed how awesome and amazing we were to have thought of this. But we were lazy, so we laughed and went back to our menial tasks. What fools we were! We could have been on the cutting edge of what has become a Choose Your Own Adventure-like revolution.

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Keeping Up with Sandman Slim: A Recap

July 11th, 2013

Later this month, Kill City Blues, the fifth book in the Sandman Slim series by Richard Kadrey, will be released. For those unfamiliar with the books, they follow the exploits of one James Stark, also known as Sandman Slim, amateur magician and supernatural warrior. For those people familiar with The Dresden Files, the series has some surface similarities, but it’s as if someone took Harry Dresden, dipped him in booze and cigarette smoke, dropped him down to Hell, kicked him round the dirt some, then dragged him back up with a bad attitude.

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Library Love: MOOCs – An Ivy League Education For The Masses

July 11th, 2013

Fast, radical change is pretty rare in higher education. If you attended a traditional brick-and-mortar college or university, chances are, current students are sitting in the same classrooms, eating in the same cafeterias, and living in the same dorms as you did. Those dorms still suck. The format for college instruction is largely unchanged as well: the professor lectures at the front of the classroom, and students pretend to listen while doing something else, like updating Facebook.

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4 Ways to Keep Up With Online Lit Mags on Your Smartphone and Tablet

July 10th, 2013

The tablet and smartphone boom of the last few years has opened significant doors for both small and large lit mags, the former better able to gain a following through online promotion and availability, the latter to gain further readership by the same means. We, the audience, also benefit from this expanded availability, having the resources to discover new works and rediscover classics. There's a wealth of awesome fiction out there awaiting our eager fingertips.

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Five Literary Magazines That Restore My Faith in Publishing

July 8th, 2013

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I read fiction submissions for a literary magazine. It sounded like fun at the time—help choose (from hundreds of hopefuls) the next batch of published authors? I was drunk with power! But then, as I slogged through the many terrible and trite stories, trying to find anything that was worthy of print, I began to despair. The stories were either formulaic to the point of soap opera antics or so obscure I had no idea what the story was even about.

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Marlowe and Me: The Road Curved, and I Didn't

July 8th, 2013

My son has done a lot of things to me, some that open my mind and some that draw blood. He’s shown me how to slow down, how to see things anew, how to enjoy the simple pleasures of shoveling sand from his sandbox onto my grill. He’s also given me a black eye, left numerous teeth marks on my legs or arms and, on my first day of class last year, as I’m already running late in my newly-ironed clothes (and honestly, the only time they were ironed that semester) he grabbed ahold of his diaper and flung it, spraying a rooster-tail of toddler crap across me and the room.

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