Blatherskite

I have a couple of exciting things to tell you about in the reading department. The first of those things is One Book One Twitter. Have you heard about it? The idea started with a question by Jeff Howe of the blog Crowdsourcing, “What if everyone on Twitter read the same book?” So the idea just went from there and as it turns out, there are several people on Twitter reading the same book and it’s really cool! The book chosen for 1b1t’s foray is American Gods by Neal Gaiman. I can’t remember how I first hear about 1b1t. Probably from Neal Gaiman himself on his Twitter stream. I’ve been wanting to read American Gods for awhile and I thought this might be an interesting experience. Plus, it just so happened that the library had American Gods on the shelf! So It was meant to be.

So far the experience has been amazing. About a month ago I set up a public Twitter account so I could participate in experiences just like this. The group of readers collectively came up with a tagging system so that there wouldn’t be any spoilers. So the general tag for One Book One Twitter is #1b1t and the tag for each chapter is #1b1t_1c for chapter one, #1b1t_2c for chapter 2 etc. So each time I finish a chapter I do a twitter search for my chapter and I found all of this amazing conversation around the chapter I just read. And intelligent conversation! It’s like I’m back at UCSC in my literature classes again, discussing the books I’m reading for class. I’d forgotten how much of a charge I got out of that discussion. It really opens up the story so much more than just reading the book through by myself.

There is a reading schedule set up but I don’t think it really matters because of the really cool chapter tagging system that is going on. You can just jump in whenever you want and dive into the discussion at any time.

I’m loving this! It’s a really fantastic way to read a book. I love the use of Twitter for this, too. When you want to discuss you can jump on anytime and discuss. You don’t have to wait for a book club meeting to do it. It’s great!

The book itself is amazing also. I’ve only read Gaiman’s children’s literature. The story is kind of mind bending. Where does he come up with this stuff? He is such an amazing writer, too. Whenever I read his books I’m always finding passages that stick with me.

I had something else I was going to write about but this post ended up being a bit long already so I will save it for another day. It kind of deserves it’s own post, anyway.

See you soon!