Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books Retold Through Twitter

By Emmett Rensin and Alexander Aciman

Book Overview

Everything from Beowulf to Bront rewritten/ruined in twenty Tweets or less in Twitterature, the hilarious expression of every book-lovers' fear of the digital age, by Alexander Acima and Emmett Rensin.

From Oedipus: PARTY IN THEBES Nobody cares I killed the old dude, plus this woman is all over me. Total MILF.

From Paradise Lose: OH MY GOD I'M IN HELL.

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.

From Hamlet: WFT IS POLONIUS DOING BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Here you will find over sixty of the greatest works of western literature - from Beowulf to Bront , 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.

From Dante's Inferno: I'm havin' a midlife crisis. Lost in the woods. Shoulda brought by iPhone.

'Hilarious' Sunday Times

'Wittily irreverent, scandalous, but sure to inspire a cult following' Daily Mail

'An irreverent, profane and sometimes brilliant collection' Reuters

'The trouble with Twitter is, I think, that too many twits might make a tw*t' David Cameron

'A tool to aid the digestion of great literature' Guardian

'This is exactly the kind of thing you'd expect University of Chicago students to come up with' Professor W J T Mitchell

Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin are undergraduates at the University of Chicago. Alexander's journalism has appeared in The New York Times and New York Sun and Emmett is a contributor to the Huffington Post.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0141047712
• ISBN13: 9780141047713
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 4.4" x 0.3" x 7.1"

Customer Reviews

He Who Laughs Lasts

Someone told me, they hoped this book would make me laugh, cry, smirk and at times feel somewhat scandalized. Oh my! Well, it did. Great job guys, it was what it was meant to be, a ROFL little book. Dennis Keith

Twitter and classic lit - what a combo!

Last night I decided to do a little reading before going to bed. First I read Moby Dick, then I enjoyed a re-reading of Jane Eyre, and I finished by tackling all seven books in the Harry Potter series. Yes, I speed read, but even with that skill there's no way I could read all those books in one night. No, I didn't use Cliffs Notes. So how did I read all those books? I spent some time with the new book Twitterature. The brainchild of two college students, Twitterature combines the simplicity of 140-character "tweets" used within the world of Twitter, with well-known works of literature. No doubt some of the long-dead authors of the classics included in this book (The Iliad, The Old Man and the Sea, The Metamorphosis) are turning over in their graves while at the same time, some serious aficionados of these volumes might very well roll their eyes. However, the rest of us will giggle with laughter. The authors do a very good job of summarizing every book, zeroing in on the key themes in each. In addition, they inject quite a bit of humor into the stories. From The Picture of Dorian Gray: "My wish came true! The portrait bears the grimace of my malice. Must hide it in my attic. Fantastic! Who said that art was useless?" From Romeo and Juliet: "Her nurse asketh if I want to marry Juliet. She is the sun but this is waaay too fast. Am I being punk'd? Where's Ashton?" From The Old Man and the Sea: "It is pulling hard. The coast is far away. May be home late." Next entry: "Still being pulled." Next entry: "Still being pulled." While I wouldn't recommend this book to prepare for a college test on any book summarized within its pages, Twitterature is none-the-less an hysterical look at over 80 books, from classics to modern, popular tomes such as The Da Vinci Code. For those not well versed in Twitter terms, there is a glossary in the back with common expressions. Parents of young Twitter fans take note: Twitterature contains a fair amount of "colorful" language and may not be appropriate for children/pre-teens. Quill says: An irreverent look at both classic and popular literature through the world of Twitter.