BOOKS: Literary Classics Something To Tweet About / Parody
Heard about this book on NPR in a little 30 second spot on Morning Edition...
Have you had enough of Twitter? Think it's whittled our lives down to 140 characters. Well, prepare to be more unnerved. The publisher Penguin has commissioned a new volume of books. Well, if you can call them books. Two college students are compressing literary classics into 20 tweets or less. It's called Twitterature. Guess we've got the Cliff Notes of the 21st century. If you've got a short attention span and you want to enjoy Shakespeare, well, have at it.
From: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105892182
The US website: http://www.twitterature.us/us/index.htm
The UK website: http://www.twitterature.us/uk/index.htm
From the book site:
Perhaps you once asked yourself, ‘What exactly is Hamlet trying to tell me? Why must he mince his words, muse in lyricism and, in short, whack about the shrub?’ No doubt such troubling questions would have been swiftly resolved were the Prince of Denmark a registered user on Twitter.com.
This, in essence, is Twitterature.
Here you will find over eighty of the greatest works of western literature – from Beowulf to Bronte, from Kafka to Kerouac, and from Dostoevsky to Dickens– each distilled through the voice of Twitter to its purest, pithiest essence. Including a full glossary of online acronyms and Twitterary terms to aid the amateur, Twitterature provides everything you need to master the literature of the civilized world, while relieving you of the burdensome task of reading it.
Here is the link to Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less
You might also consider an older graphic text illustrated by New Yorker Cartoonist Roslyn Schwartz called ShrinkLits: Seventy of the World's Towering Classics Cut Down to Si...
The table of contents of this book is pretty impressive -
Have you had enough of Twitter? Think it's whittled our lives down to 140 characters. Well, prepare to be more unnerved. The publisher Penguin has commissioned a new volume of books. Well, if you can call them books. Two college students are compressing literary classics into 20 tweets or less. It's called Twitterature. Guess we've got the Cliff Notes of the 21st century. If you've got a short attention span and you want to enjoy Shakespeare, well, have at it.
From: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105892182
The US website: http://www.twitterature.us/us/index.htm
The UK website: http://www.twitterature.us/uk/index.htm
From the book site:
Perhaps you once asked yourself, ‘What exactly is Hamlet trying to tell me? Why must he mince his words, muse in lyricism and, in short, whack about the shrub?’ No doubt such troubling questions would have been swiftly resolved were the Prince of Denmark a registered user on Twitter.com.
This, in essence, is Twitterature.
Here you will find over eighty of the greatest works of western literature – from Beowulf to Bronte, from Kafka to Kerouac, and from Dostoevsky to Dickens– each distilled through the voice of Twitter to its purest, pithiest essence. Including a full glossary of online acronyms and Twitterary terms to aid the amateur, Twitterature provides everything you need to master the literature of the civilized world, while relieving you of the burdensome task of reading it.
Here is the link to Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less
You might also consider an older graphic text illustrated by New Yorker Cartoonist Roslyn Schwartz called ShrinkLits: Seventy of the World's Towering Classics Cut Down to Si...
The table of contents of this book is pretty impressive -
Views: 225
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Simpson on
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Two twitter accounts I've been following:
Twittellectual - creative book reviews of books you've never read.
ex. The Sound and the Fury: Neurosis, sex, suici Oh look at the bird! I'm hungry. That man's tall. I wonder if it's going to rain.
Twilliteracy - judging books by their covers, one cover at a time.
ex. A Farewell to Arms: After routine drug testing starts in the pro arm wrestling ranks, the competitors grapple with their loss.
There is also a book called Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float by Sarah Schmelling. She takes classic literature and reworks it Facebook style. I found it and shared it with my department and we were all in stitches. -
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Permalink Reply by Ryan Goble on
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Elizabeth - thank you so much for sharing - I had not heard of Twittellectual - sounds awesome - all modern haiku, eh?
I do own Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float - it is entertaining, I keep meaning to do a post on that book, The Zombie Notes: A Study Guide to the Best in Undead Literary Clas... and the The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes (Vintage)
Maybe this is that post :)
Happy New Year's Eve! -
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We should also add Hip-Hop Poetry and The Classics to this list !!!
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Permalink Reply by Jeannean Berglund on
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These books have nothing to do with tweeting but after adding the other titles listed here to my wish list on Amazon, these are some titles I found we might find useful/entertaining:
The Five Minute Iliad Other Instant Classics: Great Books For The Short Attention Span by Greg Nagan
Hot Fudge Monday: Tasty Ways to Teach Parts of Speech to Students Who Have a Hard Time Swallowing Anything to Do with Grammar by Randy Larson
Unjournaling: Daily Writing Exercises that Are NOT Personal, NOT Introspective, NOT Boring! by Cheryl Miller Thurston (check out some of the example pages on Amazon. It's hilarious)
The Hot Fudge Monday book looks a little too middle school but I can easily see incorporating exercises from the Unjournaling book into the grammar exercises. -
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Jeannean - thanks for sharing - you'll have to make a grammar books post in the Poets & Writers group - But yeah, a list of "compressed / cute lit" books seems helpful to me:)
Happy New Year's!
Ry:) -
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