There are a few certain titles, however, that we’d willingly fast forward time to get our hands on. From horror to SciFi to great thrillers, here are just a few of the summer releases we are most excited about.

Be sure to let us know if we’ve missed any of the books you’re looking forward to in the comments below. We want to hear from you, LitStackers!

Source 1, Source 2

The post Summer Releases We Can’t Wait To Read appeared first on LitStack.

Check us out next week as we launch the fourth arc of Howling @ the Gates!

The post Howling at the Gates: A Teaser appeared first on LitStack.

Baz Lurhmann’s The Great Gatsby lindy-hopped away with over 50 million dollars last weekend and inspired New York’s Kathryn Schulz to put together a thought-provoking takedown of the source material: “Aesthetically overrated, psychologically vacant, and morally complacent,” she declared last week.

Schultz points out, rightly, that no one in the book is worth a bottle of bathtub gin: What does our narrator Nick do when swaggering douchebag Tom breaks his mistress Myrtle’s nose, for example? Nothing. But the really detestable member of the bunch is Daisy, who has no character. She spends the book being languidly beautiful and wealthy, ignoring her child, flirting with her cousin, and leading on her old flame, before running away with her racist brute of a husband.

Daisy may not be the technical villain of Gatsby (Tom, a proto-bro, gets that honor) but she still sucks, and if it weren’t for her a couple key players in the book would be alive at the end of it. In her honor, here are some of The Hairpin’s picks for the top detestable characters of literature—a brief rundown of bad guys who aren’t the bad guys. See their full list here.

The post Detestable Literary Characters Who Are Not Technically Villains appeared first on LitStack.

Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Orphan Master’s Son tells the compelling tale of one “John Doe” struggling to survive in the midst of what is perhaps the world’s most rigid totalitarian regime:  North Korea.  While the novel is admittedly a work of fiction, author Adam Johnson researched as deeply as he could for six years (including a trip in 2007 to the famously isolated country) to recreate an authentic portrayal of the culture and mindset of the North Korean people, as well as to give insight into why they, as a nation, would allow themselves to be controlled so completely.

The Orphan Master’s Son follows the life of Pak Jun Do, whose absent mother was a singer (“Since beautiful women in the provinces get shipped to Pyongyang, that’s certainly what happened to his mother.”) and whose father ran the Long Tomorrows orphan camp; yet although Jun Do was not an orphan, he was treated no differently than the other boys (this being the stringent “no favoritism” that his father showed him – which he assumed was a great honor).  Jun Do is not even the boy’s true name, but the name of one of the 114 Grand Martyrs of the Revolution,  a group from which all orphan names are assigned.  Jun Do, as the oldest boy, was the one who would assign names to the new boys at the orphan camp, and he assigned himself his own name.  The Martyr who was his namesake was revered because he passed the ultimate loyalty test:  although proving himself multiple times in service to the Dear Leader, his unit still did not trust him, as he came from an “impure” blood line; therefore, to demonstrate his loyalty, he hanged himself.

“Tell me, if you lived with your father, how come you have an orphan’s name?”

“He couldn’t give me his name,” Jun Do said, “or everyone would see the shame of how he was forced to raise his son.  And he couldn’t bear to give me another man’s name, even a Martyr’s.  I had to do it.”

Gils’ expression was blank.  “What about your mother?” he asked.  “What was her name?”

They heard the horn of the Mangyongbong-92 ferry in the distance.

Jun Do said, “Like putting a name to my problems would solve anything.”

Already we learn that orphans are not children whose parents have died, but children who had been given up, abandoned, by parents who simply could not care for them anymore, or who could not take them along to where they were going or did not want to subject them to the only future they could envision for them.  These children were then “adopted” by companies or military units for extremely hazardous jobs that needed to be performed by highly expendable workers.  Knowing the reputation of these camps, you have to wonder just how horrible these parents’ situations must have been for them to give up their children to such a life.  This is the reality of life in North Korea.  It is just one of the realities that we are awakened to in The Orphan Master’s Son.

Author Johnson freely acknowledges that his book is total fiction.  Other than Kim Jong-Il, who makes a number of appearances in the book, none of the characters are real; even the Dear Leader’s words and actions are completely imagined.  But with the vacuum of literary work coming from North Korea, Johnson felt compelled to write about the society that had gripped his imagination since reading Kang Chol-Hwan’s harrowing 2000 memoir, The Aquariums of Pyongyang.  As he told the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview from April 20, 2013:

If you express your own views, which is the duty of an artist, you go to the gulag. And that also means that no North Korean has read a book, as we think of a book – as a work of art whose job it is to illuminate the human experience – in three generations. They don’t even know what a book is there. So that’s one of the reasons I wrote my book, because it was this huge human mystery, and fiction hasn’t fleshed it out because there is no fiction.

One of the hardest things for Western readers to understand about North Korea is that individual citizens do not see themselves – are not allowed to see themselves – as the main character in their own lives.  There is only one main character in the drama that is North Korea, and that is the Dear Leader, formerly Kim Jong-Il (who died in December 2011), and now his son, Kim Jong-Un.  Everyone else – EVERYONE else – is a secondary, a supporting, expendable character.  Not only is that all they are expected to be, trying to be anything else is punishable, to the extreme.  As one character in the book explains:

Where we are from, stories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he’d be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change.

To have an independent, even artistic viewpoint is to be an enemy of the state.  And to want something that hasn’t already been given to you is a death sentence.  Or worse.

“Let me tell you about the Dear Leader,” she said.  “When he wants you to lose more, he gives you more to lose.”

“His grudge was with me, not you.  What reason could he have to-”

“There,” she said.  “There is the proof that you don’t understand any of this.  The answer is that the Dear Leader doesn’t need reasons.”

It is against this backdrop that Jun Do’s story unfolds.  The tale that Johnson weaves is not an ideological diatribe; it does not even pass judgment, although the brutality, abuse and fear speak for themselves.  Instead, we are given a deeply personal account of Jun Do as he moves from being a young man who does unspeakable things simply because he is told to do so, to a man who has unspeakable things done to him, but who also starts to listen and think about what is occurring around and within him.  It’s not that he sees himself as an instrument of change – Jun Do is no rebel – but he learns how to harbor his own thoughts and use the training that has come to him through years of forced brutality to survive an inexplicable (yet so very believable) experience that ends up changing him into an entirely different person – and teaches him the value of love and the honor that comes with sacrifice.

In the grand tradition of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and in the footsteps of The Good Earth, Gone With the Wind, The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Beloved, Alan Johnson has given us a story that is deeply rooted in time and place, defining a people at their point in history.  And in doing so, in allowing us to glimpse something that is so totally removed from our own experience and yet holds at the very least a recognizable ring of honesty, he expands our knowledge of not only that time and place, but also that which makes all of us, regardless of who we are or where we’re from, regardless of that which controls us and that which defines us, human.  The Orphan Master’s Son is indeed worthy of its prize.

The post The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson appeared first on LitStack.

Last week, in the midst of commencement season, small L.A. video production company The Glossary released a five-minute cinematic interpretation of David Foster Wallace’s philosophically resonant 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College.

The original speech, called “This is Water,” made its rounds online via transcripts and audio recordings and is only now going viral, eight years after its delivery and five years after Wallace’s death.

Excerpting half of the 22-minute speech, the film remains loyal to the author’s central message: While we cannot necessarily control how adult life unfurls, we can choose how we process our experiences.

The filmmakers take few creative liberties. Basically, they edited Wallace’s audio and had actors play out the scenes the writer describes much the same way Ken Burns might do a video reenactment. Hand-drawn graphics highlight the text’s most salient phrases.

In just over a week, the video has 4.2 million hits on YouTube and counting. The original unedited versions – posted at random by various Wallace enthusiasts – have never broken 30,000.

So why the sudden interest?

Do people really need an easy-to-digest, heavily-abbreviated visual demonstration of a somewhat ruminative thesis in order to appreciate its message?

Given the video’s precipitous popularity, the answer is an unambiguous “yes.” And the film’s producers seem to have known that.

The bare bones of the audio recording didn’t take off, and thus the film’s director Matt Freidell told Adweek that “a short film seemed the perfect way [for it to reach] a wider audience.”

The fact that the film uses attractive, young actors and funky MTV-style graphic elements to animate the speech’s most depressing moments is bound to have added to the film’s virality. The graduation season release didn’t hurt YouTube numbers, either.

It is as if the filmmakers heeded Wallace’s warning that “large parts of adult American life … [involve] boredom, routine and petty frustration.” Their effort tries to minimize this reality by making the writer’s speech as compelling as conceivably possible.

Compare the commencement speech video (below) to DFW’s uncut original address and decide which one you like better.

This is the reinterpretation that has gone viral.

And here’s the original:

The post Why David Foster Wallace’s Commencement Speech Went Viral appeared first on LitStack.

Like many of us, I read Fitzgerald’s classic in high school and didn’t enjoy the novel, at all. I didn’t enjoy it, not because I was forced to read the novel, but because I didn’t like the story and the characters. Daisy was so superficial and vapid, and I felt Gatsby was just a loser. Tom is an huge jerk (and I’m being nice) and Nick is follower who lacks a backbone. A book filled with so many unpleasant characters makes for an uncompelling story.

It is with those thoughts in mind that I flip-flopped on going to see Baz Lurhman’s adaptation. See, the thing is I love Baz’s films, specifically his Red Curtain series. I knew he would do his best to capture the spectacle of Fitzgerald’s world and that the film would be gorgeous, full of color and fantastical visions.

And I was right. The Great Gatsby is a beautiful film. The sets, the costumes, the graphics and special effects used, Baz’s camera movements that create such an fantastical film, were perfect. It is truly a visually stunning film. From a writer’s standpoint, Baz does a unique trick with the narration where the words, at times, float, fall, appear, cross the screen. This technique highlighted the beauty of the language from the novel and my heart soared at all those little moments. Lurhman also pulls some amazing performances from the actors, specifically Leonardo DiCaprio. Both men actually managed to do what Fitzgerald couldn’t – I actually cared about Gatsby. My eyes actually got misty at the end.

All of that love aside, I still did not like the story and that I feel is what may hamper the success of the film. No matter how one adapts a novel, how visually amazing a director may make it, if the story is lacking, there is no way to make it better. I enjoyed the visuals of the movie, but hated the story. Hence, why my reaction to the story is mixed. I can’t fully say I loved the movie because I still hated the story.

In the end, I neither hated nor loved The Great Gatsby.   I’d recommend for folks to see Gatsby on the big screen, if only to see the spectacle and feel the fantasy that Lurhman creates. Will I see the movie again? most likely. Will I buy the DVD? Very likely.

The post A Gatsby Convert? appeared first on LitStack.

I truly enjoy writing book reviews, but I enjoy reading them, too.  My favorite part of the Sunday newspaper is the spread dedicated to book reviews, and often I end up heading over to the website of my local library with paper in hand, to place a request for at least one title that was reviewed that week.  Of course I follow what is offered on LitStack very closely, and I’m constantly amazed at the fun and informative features that Editor-In-Chief Tee Tate rolls out on a daily basis, and I get quite a few recommendations from the others reviewers here – good folks, all.  I follow a few other literary websites, too, and receive newsletters from a couple of the publishing houses that I admire.  I’m always looking for information on new books, whether from other websites, friends, authors promoting colleagues, even “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” (amazingly, they often have authors as guests, and I really enjoy seeing how the authors promote their own work).

Sometimes I will check other reviews of a book I have been selected to review, although I don’t do this often because I don’t want to potentially influence what I have to say with someone else’s thoughts.  Occasionally I get a book to review that has won many awards or major accolades, and those I feel warrant a bit more research.  Research generally leads me to some really interesting author interviews, and sometimes I will run across analyses of those works that point out elements that had never occurred to me.

But I tend to stay away from other publications’ reviews.  In fact, I’ve found that often when I read reviews in newspapers or periodicals of “high reputation,” sometimes I have to wonder just when the review is going to start!  Critics will spend paragraphs taking us down a road, via anecdote, historical account or scholarly analogy, that meanders far away from the book that is supposedly being reviewed, coming to some salient point only after:  1) demonstrating great (perceived) wit, 2) deigning to share knowledge bordering on megalomania, 3) seeing how many high falutin’ words can be fit into one sentence, or  4) regaling the reader with stories rife with insider innuendo and name dropping.  Sometimes I have to wonder if I’m really reading a book review, or if someone instead slipped a self-aggrandizing  essay in its place, undetected by an overworked copy editor and non-existent typesetter.

I figure if I can’t detect an actual review within four paragraphs, then it’s not really worth my time reading it.  (I’ve honestly read reviews that never seem to really give any information on the targeted book at all, which feels like a cheat.) That made me stop and think – what thought processes go into my own reviews?   Do I have a certain pattern that I follow, or precepts that I hold to, when I post a review here at LitStack?  Is there some kind of signature that I fall into, that would tell someone “Oh, Sharon wrote that one!”, even if there was no by-line on the article?

Without spending a lot of time on metrics, or becoming too analytical, and not pausing at all to vet my process (if I truly have one), I think I’ve identified a few values that I at least attempt to maintain when I write a review.  While not following a set formula (I try to let the book dictate the direction of my review) there are points that I work hard at making.  I come at those points from the position of one who has looked for those same points in other reviews and either found them lacking in poor reviews, or found them in spades in extremely helpful ones.  Those points include:

1) Express fairly early on a genre, or genre relation, or lack thereof, of the book being reviewed.  Many folks, even the most avid of readers, prefer certain genres or know that they are not really drawn to others.  I, myself, am not enamored of romance novels.  This does not mean that romance novels are bad, and I readily admit that I’ve read some really kick ass romance novels.  They simply are not normally my cup of tea.  If I am reading a review, and find out that a book is at its heart a harlequin romance, I’d like to know that up front, so I can continue reading only if the review highlights contents, characters or settings that are extremely conducive to holding my interest despite the romance element.  Yes, that’s a highly subjective vantage point, but isn’t that part of what a review is all about?

2) Lead into the book, but don’t give away the entire plot.  I often will spend more time outlining what happens at the onset of a novel and then highly generalize the rest of the book; I do this consciously.  I want to draw the reader in enough to get them hooked, and then let them explore on their own.  While I do want to go beyond a publicity blurb summary of the book, I don’t want to take away any of the sense of discovery that lies within almost every good book I’ve read.  I try never, ever to reveal a major plot development (hint, perhaps, but not reveal) because I don’t think a review should merely outline the book – it should give impressions of its merit, wherever those may be found.

3) Always focus on the book itself.  If I have an anecdote to apply to my review, I do my best to keep it short, and make sure it applies specifically to the book being reviewed.  People are very busy nowadays – they want to know if the book is going to be interesting to them first and foremost; if it is, they will keep reading.  If it’s not, they’ll move on.  If someone does move on without reading one of my reviews, I sure hope it’s because they’ve determined they aren’t interested in that book, not because they’ve lost interest with my own meandering.  Authors deserve at least that.

4) Include at least one quote from the book.  Often, I wish I had more space to quote more extensively, because I think the author’s voice is one of the most unique and compelling elements of any literary work.  World-building, characterizations, well defined plots and such are all vitally important, yes, but if you can give the gist of a writer in a short quote, then that is a lovely glimpse to give the reader beyond my own subjective opinion.  Sometimes including a short and applicable quote is not possible – some authors defy having snippets of their work evoking the whole – but when it can be done, it shall be done.

5) Accentuate the positive without side-stepping the negative.  I don’t ever think it’s necessary to tear down a work or an author in any given review (although you take me out for coffee or a few beers and you might hear an earful!), but I also don’t think that a review should sugarcoat the perception of glaring errors in the execution of any work.  I do try to temper any negatives I have, due to the realization that often what does not work for me may be just fine for someone else.  My negatives tend to be of the “I did notice…” or “I did have problems with… ” or “I did struggle with….” ilk, but those are usually followed by a “but” to balance out direct criticisms. Not always, but usually.  I mean, gee whiz, folks – I genuinely feel that someone who has had the time, energy, perseverance, courage, and dedication to write a book deserves some credit, often heaps of it.  So if on the very rare occasion when I truly, honestly don’t like a book at all, due to what I perceive as shortcomings in the writing, I simply won’t write a review of it.  My reviews are meant to inform, not tear down, and should something be abhorrent enough to me to not want to share it – then I won’t.  End of story.

Bottom line, I am truly, deeply, and humbly honored to be able to share my thoughts about books with anyone who may read my reviews.  I take every review I write very seriously, hoping that it will help an author reach another reader – that truly is the icing on the cake and the dark chocolate raspberry ganache in the cupcake for me.  So “thank you” to each and every one of you who reads a review I’ve written, and a whopping huge “kudos” to all those amazing authors who write the books I am lucky enough to review.  I hope you find my reviews helpful, ’cause that’s what it’s all about!

The post Gimbling in the Wabe – A Peek Inside My Thoughts on Reviewing Books appeared first on LitStack.

Neil Gaiman has explained that he really wants to terrify fans should he write another story of Doctor Who, feeling that Nightmare in Silver didn’t quite deliver on that front.

Speaking about the pros and cons of returning he said:

On the one hand I don’t have time to write Doctor Who. It doesn’t pay very well, but you also have to rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it and never get paid, whereas in America you get paid for every rewrite… And there are lots of things including movies, novels, an HBO series that I should be doing…

On the other hand I haven’t done an episode set on Earth yet, and I haven’t created a new monster. And there’s part of me that feels… I haven’t scared anybody yet.

‘The BBC website used to mark out of ten how scary an episode would be [Fear Factor]. The Doctor’s Wife was probably only a 2, maybe a 3. The Cybermen has a few little scary bits but it’s running at about a 5 or 6. I’d love to a 9. I’d love to do something that sends adults behind the sofa too and makes them wee. Pools of wee.”

The post Neil Gaiman is Eager To Frighten Doctor Who Fans appeared first on LitStack.

Here’s more information on this outstanding project:

In conjunction with Galileo Games, and using the talents of some truly incredible professionals, our Ministry Kickstarter is off and running.

In the next month we need to raise $20,000 so that we can launch a brand new anthology and a role-playing game. Check out our offerings, and specials, and please help spread the word on your various social networks. This is a huge project, but we are excited to be finally setting forth on it.

Galileo Games and Imagine That! Studios have teamed up to bring you an ambitious steampunk project! The Ministry Initiative is a two-part creative endeavor that will not only premiere new fiction from the steampunk world of the Ministry but also present a brand new role playing game from the makers of Bulldogs! and the ENnie Award winning game Shelter in Place. Thrill to the tales in The Ministry Protocol, or join in as an Agent in The Ministry Initiative.

Source

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Of course, sometimes film makers get it right. Sometimes they come pretty close to perfect and as book lovers, we like to think it’s because they understand the importance of that heart filling the screen.

This week, our staff picks concern the best and worst film adaptations of our favorite books. Be sure to tell us your choices in the comments. We want to hear from you!

The post LitStaff Pick: Film Adaptations We Love and Those We Hate appeared first on LitStack.