About book Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books Retold Through Twitter (2009)
I really enjoyed this book; I took my time with it because I didn't want to ruin it by reading it all at once and it becoming 'samey' (which I found, even just reading two or three parodies at a time, it had a tendency to do). Even doing that, though, I found myself getting bored quickly.My personal favourite was MacBeth - it's probably one of my favourite of Shakespeare's and it was the one that I did keep revisiting for a quick giggle. Actually, I really enjoyed all of the Shakespeare parodies. From Hamlet's "WTF IS POLONIUS DOING BEHIND THE CURTAIN??" to MacBeth's "Away to home now with my homeboy Banquo. I shall be in Inverness in time for haggis" - Shakespeare is definitely the most well 'translated' in to the twitterverse!However, there are a few flaws, naturally, not every single tweet is hilarious so you have to keep reading until the one which will make laugh comes up - which in some cases just didn't happen for me. The second reason is that when you don't know the original classic, most of the humour is gone. There were several books that featured that I hadn't read, therefore didn't understand t he humour - though I tried to read them all there were some that I skipped.Overall it's a funny read, perfect to just pick up when you have just 5 minutes and well worth flicking through. I wouldn't have paid the full price for it, but 50p in a charity shop I'm very happy with! Written by two students from the University of Chicago, the concept behind Twitterature is simple - take a classic piece of literature, break down the structure until it reaches 140 characters and present it as if it was being tweeted. Confused? Here's an example from George Orwell's 1984:"Met a drab hot girl today. Slipped me a note saying she loved me. Romance is forbidden because everything good in this society is bad. Hmm."But be warned - if you're a serious fan of literature, you might take objection to the way that these masterpieces have been distilled and re-written with contemporary jargon. And if you're not a Twitter user, you probably won't understand what the fuss is all about anyway. Otherwise, it's worth a read just for the kicks.
Do You like book Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books Retold Through Twitter (2009)?
Just plain fun but you really have to be a literally bookworm to really appreciate it properly.
—gopalsunnt
Classics were never meant to be condensed to this extent, anyway... so all in all a good job.
—Mainelymadscientist
Very funny indeed. Especially if you've read the classics mentioned in the book.
—serg
