Aisa Valenzuela

Originally posted July 26, 2014Before I started reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, my main fear was that it would be too “precious” or “pretentious” for me. The title itself could be taken in two ways. Either the author, Dave Eggers, was deluded or...

How does Pixar do it? Since Toy Story was released in 1995, Pixar Animation Studios has released fourteen films that have all opened at number one in the box office. What makes Pixar’s achievement even more distinctive is that they’ve created films that aren’t just visual and technological spectacles, but also instant classics that touch the heart and mind.

Am I the only one who didn’t know what to initially make of Neil Gaiman’s new book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane? The back cover blurb is vague. The front cover is somber and adult-looking, but the story is about a seven-year-old boy. I couldn’t tell if it was an adult or children’s book; fantasy or general fiction.

Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Hogwarts anymore. If J.K. Rowling set out to write a novel that is the complete opposite of Harry Potter, then – on the surface – she succeeded with The Casual Vacancy. If Harry Potter is set in a children’s world of magic, then The Casual Vacancy is very firmly set in an adult’s world of the mundane. Specifically, it’s set in Pagford, a fictional, idyllic town in England, which Rowling uses as a microcosm for humanity.

A video game wrapped in a dystopia wrapped in a hero quest. Maybe this could begin to describe Ernest Cline’s debut novel Ready Player One. In the book, the world is a polluted, war-torn place thirty years from now. To escape from their troubles, most people spend their days on OASIS, a multiplayer, role-playing game even more pervasive than the internet is today. On the OASIS, you can go to school, go on quests, be anyone you want to be based on your avatar, and even create entire planets.

Forget about clowns, cotton candy, and colorful tents. Le Cirque des Rêves, or The Circus of Dreams, is unlike any circus you've ever been to. This one arrives suddenly and without warning, relying on word of mouth to attract visitors. It opens at nightfall and closes at dawn. Its tents are striped in monochromatic black-and-white; no other color in sight. Most importantly (and unknown to everyone but a select few), the circus is the setting for a lifelong duel between two gifted magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been chosen to do battle with each other since childhood.

The "in" thing in pop culture right now is to subvert children's fantasy books and fairy tales into something darker and edgier for adults (see TV's Once Upon A Time and Game of Thrones), and this is exactly what you have with The Magician King, Lev Grossman’s sequel to his 2009 bestselling novel, The Magicians. In The Magicians, main character Quentin Coldwater gets accepted into Brakebills, a secret school for magic in upstate New York similar to Hogwarts. (That is, if Hogwarts was college-level and populated by hormonal, jaded, chain-smoking adolescents.)

When Michael J. Fox came out with a memoir in 2002 called Lucky Man, the title took many by surprise. In September 1998, Fox had stunned the world with the revelation that he suffered from Parkinson's Disease, a degenerative, neurological condition with no cure. Diagnosed at the age of 30 and at the height of his career, the title Lucky Man for his autobiography seemed particularly ironic.