Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Lionel Shriver picked the name "Kevin Khatchadourian" out of the phone book. Where do authors get names these days, when no one uses a phone book anymore? (Source.)
Almost all the school shootings in the book—except for Kevin's—happened in reality. The most infamous of them was the Columbine massacre on April 20, 1999. These shootings occurred before the prevalence of online thought-pieces. Of course, this book is basically a really long thought-piece about the epidemic of school shootings. Here is a timeline of events for the Columbine event. What does fiction tell us that this timeline cannot? (Source.)
Shriver had trouble publishing her book because of the subject matter, and filmmakers had trouble making it for the same reason. The film wasn't allowed to use many brand names, because the brands didn't want to be associated with such a controversial movie. As a result, it's kind of an anti-product placement film. (Source.)
A group of journalists called Independent Media Solidarity created a documentary about the 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting. They titled it We Need to Talk About Sandy Hook, borrowing the title from this book. (Source.)