Hey, Internet: What if We All Read the Same Book?

The idea was put forward by Jeff Howe last year, as a way to reinvent the book club concept and giving it a global reach, instead of being something you do with people in the neighbourhood (or city). So last summer One Book, One Twitter got around 12,000 people from all over the world reading and discussing (on Twitter) Neil Gaiman’s American Gods (great book, by the way, you should read it). And then it was over.

The same Jeff Howe is now trying to revive the idea, and the Twitter-based book club is back. The initiative has a new name – 1book140 – and it’s now monthly instead of a one-off thing. The book for this month is The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood, as chosen by “the crowd”, and the discussion is already going strong on Twitter, in tweets annotated with the dedicated hashtag for each part (#1b140_1, #1b140_2, #1b140_3, etc.). Here’s the reading/discussion schedule for June, and an FAQ for those of you who want to quickly get into it.

I’m joining the club myself, and might even start tweeting about it.

On a funny note, 2 weeks ago Sir Alex Ferguson has publicly criticized Twitter by saying it’s a “waste of time” and that people should instead “go to a library and read a book”. Well, there you go.

Oh, the irony of all this…

Amazon, that last week stopped hosting the WikiLeaks cables because the content was against its Terms of Service, is now selling a Kindle book with those same cables. Yes, you read that right! For under €10 you can buy the Kindle book titled “WikiLeaks documents expose US foreign policy conspiracies. All cables with tags from 1- 5000”.

This looks like the work of the same people that are fighting to keep the WikiLeaks content available for all. And if the reviews are any indication, it’s doing its job in turning people against Amazon.

I just think it’s hilarious, and I’m surprised that Amazon doesn’t keep an eye on the content published to its store. It’s not like it’s the first time it ever happened, or did they already forget about “A Pedophile’s Guide”?

It’s part of the Coraline movie promotion, debuting on the 6th of February, which is inspired in a book by Neil Gaiman himself. Ever wondered what koumpounophobia is? Neil answers.

(Via Neil Gaiman’s Journal)