You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
2.83 AVERAGE
2.83 AVERAGE
Very snarky and had me giggling in the library! I only read the tweets about the books I have read. Originally I thought this might be good to give to my AP English teacher, but, um, nope. I don't think he'd appreciate the cussing. It even got old for me after a bit. My favs? Catcher in the Rye and Oedipus the King.
Twitterature is exactly what it seems to be: literature through tweets. In the space of 140 characters and 20 tweets, Alexander Aciman and Emmet Rensin retell some of the classics of world literature.
The book is short and easy to read even if you are not familiar with some of the works that appear here. It is also very funny, with some tweets that made laugh out loud.
Another case solved. I'm the Batman of Britain
Sherlock Holmes (@KeepDiggingWatson)
WHAT THE FUCKING FUCKITY FUCK ARE THESE FUCKING GIANTS DOING. HOLY SHIT THEY HAVE 4 FUCKING SPINNING ARMS!!!
Don Quixote (@DonQuixote)
The only problem I can find is that, after the first few tweetbooks, the constant swearing and focus on sex gets a litle bit tiring. Most of the tweets have something to do with sex even if the book had nothing to do with this estrange sexual fixation. It also fails to "reproduce" the original voices and tones of the different books. I personaly believe that it would have been much funnier if the tweets had been written resembling the style of the original book. Otherwise, it just looks that it's the same character or narrator writing all those tweets.
All in all, a very easy and funny read. Ideal if you are in for something light.
The book is short and easy to read even if you are not familiar with some of the works that appear here. It is also very funny, with some tweets that made laugh out loud.
Another case solved. I'm the Batman of Britain
Sherlock Holmes (@KeepDiggingWatson)
WHAT THE FUCKING FUCKITY FUCK ARE THESE FUCKING GIANTS DOING. HOLY SHIT THEY HAVE 4 FUCKING SPINNING ARMS!!!
Don Quixote (@DonQuixote)
The only problem I can find is that, after the first few tweetbooks, the constant swearing and focus on sex gets a litle bit tiring. Most of the tweets have something to do with sex even if the book had nothing to do with this estrange sexual fixation. It also fails to "reproduce" the original voices and tones of the different books. I personaly believe that it would have been much funnier if the tweets had been written resembling the style of the original book. Otherwise, it just looks that it's the same character or narrator writing all those tweets.
All in all, a very easy and funny read. Ideal if you are in for something light.
This book may be a bit uneven, but overall it's pretty darn entertaining, and I think I'm half mad at myself I didn't think of the idea first. So you have a selection of classic lit (and some popular lit) transformed into a short barrage of tweets from the heroes (or heroines) of the stories, and obviously some characters are better fits for this than others. Holden Caulfield, with his need to make connections in spite of his increasing disgust with the world around him is a perfect "Twit"---while the Jane Eyre tweets ring false for the character and just generally off-color and unfunny. The book is at its most entertaining when it stays truest to Twitter speak and tweet styles (like this shout-out from the protagonist of The DaVinci Code: "Taking a breather to solve some puzzles. 'A Pope', anybody? There's so many! Mad props if anyone can solve it.") or even better, this faux Tweet from Paradise Lost's the Devil himself: "Anyone heard anything about Earth? Good? Bad? Will be there tonight bringing the MOTHAFUCKIN' RUCKUS. If anyone wants in, txt it." And in this vein, the Twitter handles for the characters are-more often than not-pretty clever and amusing on their own: (Emma Bovary=@TheRealDesperateHousewife, Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein=@NotoriousDOC and so on).
A little frivolous, sure--but it's a breeze to read, and good for a few laughs.
A little frivolous, sure--but it's a breeze to read, and good for a few laughs.
I enjoyed it, apart from one or two chapters - mainly the Sherlock Holmes one, which doesn't try any harder than the one repeated coke joke. There are some wonderful oneliners in here, too (not the ones on the back cover, per se.)
This book is probably better if you have actually read every single story that was abbreviated into Tweets herein, but what can you do. It's a good enough selection, in my opinion; plus, it made me put some of these classics a little higher on my To Be Read list.
This book is probably better if you have actually read every single story that was abbreviated into Tweets herein, but what can you do. It's a good enough selection, in my opinion; plus, it made me put some of these classics a little higher on my To Be Read list.
In 140-characters or less, this book pretty much sucked. Read the classics. It will be worth it.
A quick read with some funny Twitter-ized parodies of famous books. The parodies are probably funnier if you're familiar with the original stories. Maybe turning some of the sexual themes a little too overtly?
Snatched this book for free, but even despite that it’s disappointing. Imagine some teenage edgelord trying to be smart, funny, and have innuendo while discussing sex in a desperately intellectual way but using slang “to play it cool” - yeah, it doesn’t work
**BOOK CLUB BONUS ROUND**
Laura and I headed back to my hometown of Rocky Mount this past weekend to attend my little brother’s Homecoming. It’s a two hour drive each way, and thanks to a little Southern Snowstorm, we ended up with six total hours to blow. Fortunately, Laura, being the brilliant woman that she is, thought to buy a book pre-trip that would be easy to pick up and drop just as easily without worrying about remembering silly details like characters or setting or plot. The result this go round: Twitterature.
Twitterature is a humor book that takes over eighty works of literature and rewrites them in 20 “tweets” or less from the perspective of the lead character. If you’ve heard of Twitter (seriously, everybody HAS to have at least heard of it), but don’t understand how it works, imagine a crappy version of Facebook where they take away everything but status updates and limit users to 140 characters per update. The books tackled range from classics like Hamlet to modern fair such as The Da Vinci Code to books so old we don’t even know who wrote them (Beowulf).
The front of the book features a quote from The Wall Street Journal that states, “Do you hear that? It’s the sound of Shakespeare, rolling over in his grave.” The other quotes on the first page continue this streak of honesty:
“Sincerest apologies to Shakespeare, Stendhal, and Joyce: how were we to know it would come to this?” – Mashable.com
“Twitterature makes me want to punch someone, preferably the ‘authors.’ They’re in Chicago. I’m gonna take a road trip.” – @damig, Twitter
“Just f***ing shoot me now.” – Mike C., grouchyconservativepundits.com
While I see where they’re coming from, it still doesn’t stop the fact that the book had both of us laughing out loud on a regular basis. You could choose to view it is as the ultimate low in disrespect or a perfect high for geeks around the country. While the cover and introduction play the comedy angle where the purpose of the book is to simplify boringly long books for an ADD generation, we realized as we went through that it only really worked for the books we had previously read.
Really, we only read about 75% of them after this discovery – sticking solely with the ones we read in school, for fun, or were at the very least familiar with (I’ve never read nor will ever read Twilight, but you can bet your ass we read the Twitterature for it). If you want an awesome coffee table book or find yourself in need of something to make a roadtrip a little shorter, I absolutely would give this a vote. If you can’t find the humor in this idea, you need to lighten up. Funny is funny. Anyone that doesn’t already have an appreciation for the books lampooned on these pages isn’t going to get it. No one is going to use Twitterature to pretend they’re suddenly a scholar, so let’s not go numbering the signs of the apocalypse just yet.
Laura and I headed back to my hometown of Rocky Mount this past weekend to attend my little brother’s Homecoming. It’s a two hour drive each way, and thanks to a little Southern Snowstorm, we ended up with six total hours to blow. Fortunately, Laura, being the brilliant woman that she is, thought to buy a book pre-trip that would be easy to pick up and drop just as easily without worrying about remembering silly details like characters or setting or plot. The result this go round: Twitterature.
Twitterature is a humor book that takes over eighty works of literature and rewrites them in 20 “tweets” or less from the perspective of the lead character. If you’ve heard of Twitter (seriously, everybody HAS to have at least heard of it), but don’t understand how it works, imagine a crappy version of Facebook where they take away everything but status updates and limit users to 140 characters per update. The books tackled range from classics like Hamlet to modern fair such as The Da Vinci Code to books so old we don’t even know who wrote them (Beowulf).
The front of the book features a quote from The Wall Street Journal that states, “Do you hear that? It’s the sound of Shakespeare, rolling over in his grave.” The other quotes on the first page continue this streak of honesty:
“Sincerest apologies to Shakespeare, Stendhal, and Joyce: how were we to know it would come to this?” – Mashable.com
“Twitterature makes me want to punch someone, preferably the ‘authors.’ They’re in Chicago. I’m gonna take a road trip.” – @damig, Twitter
“Just f***ing shoot me now.” – Mike C., grouchyconservativepundits.com
While I see where they’re coming from, it still doesn’t stop the fact that the book had both of us laughing out loud on a regular basis. You could choose to view it is as the ultimate low in disrespect or a perfect high for geeks around the country. While the cover and introduction play the comedy angle where the purpose of the book is to simplify boringly long books for an ADD generation, we realized as we went through that it only really worked for the books we had previously read.
Really, we only read about 75% of them after this discovery – sticking solely with the ones we read in school, for fun, or were at the very least familiar with (I’ve never read nor will ever read Twilight, but you can bet your ass we read the Twitterature for it). If you want an awesome coffee table book or find yourself in need of something to make a roadtrip a little shorter, I absolutely would give this a vote. If you can’t find the humor in this idea, you need to lighten up. Funny is funny. Anyone that doesn’t already have an appreciation for the books lampooned on these pages isn’t going to get it. No one is going to use Twitterature to pretend they’re suddenly a scholar, so let’s not go numbering the signs of the apocalypse just yet.