Twitterature .. yes literature in Twitter!

Initial thoughts

Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less by Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin is the unlikely marriage between tweeting and literature. This book compiles over 60 books - including many classics and favourites - into pithy tweets. Such a fun way to read a classic! The book was put together by two 19-year-olds. Talk about brevity at its best!

Here's what a Viking editor had to say about it:

Say the word Twitter to a book lover and they will probably roll their eyes at you and sigh. Some of the greatest works of literature - Homer's Iliad, Dante's Inferno, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Richardson's Clarissa, Joyce's Ulysses - are long, sometimes difficult and often challenging. Twitter is the opposite: a free-for-all of voices clamouring for a split-second's attention with zero quality control. This is what makes Twitterature so funny: huge books made ridiculously small; great stories told in silly voices. Like all good pastiche, Twitterature skewers the original work with pin-point accuracy - mocking its grandiosity, exposing absurd coincidences of plotting, parodying its subject's ticks, slips and oddities. The difference, though, and what makes this little collection particularly enjoyable, is that the joke falls just as heavily (well, probably more so) on Twitter. In a face-off between Shakespeare's Macbeth and his Twitter avatar 'BigMac', it's fairly clear who comes off looking worse. So, in a curious way, Twitterature is just as much a celebration of the classics as it is a mockery of them.

For example, Harry Potter (all 7 books!) comes out as the following! Check it out after the jump!

Hello everyone from under the stairs! Aunt and Uncle threw me under here again. Gosh, life is so hard.

That fat fuck Dudley stole all my food! I wish something good or at least interesting would happen to me.

OMG I'm a WIZARD! And my parents are DEAD WIZARDS! Off to magic boarding school. PEACE BITCHES!

OMG Hogwarts OMG I have two friends OMG magic OMG the Slytherins are Nazis OMG there is an EVIL WIZARD out to get me.

Snape a douche! Dumbledore a wise man (but maybe gay?). Voldemort tried to kill me! Flying broomstick! Battle over magic crack-rock!

OMG the year's over. Time goes fast when you're having fun. Goes slow if you have to read seven books with lots of adverbs.

Back to school! Should be a great year! I hope nothing crazy happens like last time.

No! Voledemort is trying to wreck my shit up AGAIN!! I am TIRED of these MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES IN THIS MOTHERFUCKING CASTLE!

Back to school AGAIN! This year definitely better! A dude who tried to kill me turned out OK. Sometimes misunderstandings happen. LOL.

Oh man, big tournament at my school this year!! PSYCHED! I hope nobody dies this year, and every year as if by clockwork.

Competing in a tournament. Also: is it just me, or should they really have a tougher vetting process for Dark Arts teachers?

OMFG VOLDEMORT AGAIN. Don't worry, I have the hang of this by now. Plus there's a secret society out to protect me. Give up already LV.

I AM UNDERGOING A LOT OF ANGST RIGHT NOW. And this Asian girl is giving me a major hard-on. Blue balls suck. No magic potion for it either.

Don't believe anyone who says Voldemort isn't back AGAIN. I KNOW WHAT I SAW!

Big brawl at Ministry of Magic! Sirius is dead. Super-pissed. I just used the torture spell, didn't I? I'm going to Azkaban now, aren't I?

Back to school again! Boy, everything better go well this year or I'm going to eat a wand.

Hey! My friend's sister is totally hot for me. Feels a bit dirty, but yeah baby, you like my scar, don't you? Wanna see my wand?

SNAPE KILLED DUMBLEDORE WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF? THIS IS LIKE THE BIGGEST CLIFFHANGER EVER!!!

Sometimes this guy, Tom, keeps showing up. I don't want him around but I don't have the heart to tell him, because he killed my parents.

NM last tweet. Killed him. Something about a prophecy. Who cares? Last seven years have felt like same one, over and over.

Check out more examples here.