literature

Classics is a digital reading app that gives you access to more than 20 preset books in an inviting, intuitive interface. When you open Classics, you see a 3D wooden bookshelf with neatly shelved virtual books--all classic, public-domain titles such as "Call of the Wild," "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," the "Illiad," and "20,000 Leagues under the Sea." You can scroll through the bookshelf by flicking up and down, and red bookmarks show which books you've started as well as your progress (the shorter the bookmark, the further you've … Read more

The web is helping our children read more. Or less. Or, well, maybe it depends on what you call reading. Because if it's got spelling mistakes or words no dictionary has caught up with yet, then it's not really reading, is it?

The New York Times yesterday hosted a spirited debate on the subject. Parents, dyslexics, professors, even children chipped in with their muscular views.

Subtly showing its hand, the Times made sure the article was a very long one. Because, like many other bastions of journalism and literature, it is a newspaper that chooses to uphold certain … Read more

It's not yet on the Web, but In the the July issue, The Atlantic has an exceptional and provocative article by Nick Carr, asking "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" It's a riff on Carr's book, The Big Switch (reviewed here), but covers new ground and has me worried. Carr writes:

The human brain is almost infinitely malleable...James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that even the adult mind "is very plastic...The brain...has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions."

As we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our "intellectual technologies"--the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities--we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies.

"Excellent!" you say, "Now I'll be able to retrieve an infinite amount of information, like Google." Maybe. Or maybe our ability to retain and process information will continue to dwindle. Remember books? Those were the things we read before e-mail, Web browsing, and Twitter came on the scene.

Speaking of Twitter, am I the only one who views it as further evidence of a soundbite culture that struggles even to think beyond 140-character blips? … Read more

I was just reading Phil Windley's exposition on why he's dumping Facebook for Twitter. No big loss for him, as both of the "services" reek of potty: He simply chose the lesser of two noisy and vapid "conversations." It's like choosing between brands of puffed rice.

People like Phil love Twitter because it gives immediate, to the point information. People like me hate it for almost exactly the same reason. I want real information, real thinking. I don't want soundbites that serve as excuses for real thought.

I choose my literature in … Read more

Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is perhaps my favorite book of all time (with Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, Dreiser's An American Tragedy and Twain's Huckleberry Finn pressuring from behind). As with nearly all of my favorite books, it doesn't pull punches. There are happy endings in Dostoevsky's books, but not outwardly happy. Raskolnikov, the "superman" protagonist of Crime and Punishment ends up in a Siberian prison but is redeemed inwardly. That is Dostoevsky's genius.

As I was re-reading Crime and Punishment this week, I came across this fantastic passage:

"I don't believe in a future life," said Raskolnikov.

Svidriga?lov sat lost in thought.

"And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort," he said suddenly.… Read more

Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her acceptance speech clamors for depth in our discussions. The very fact that TechCrunch - king of the tech soundbite - dissed it is testament enough of the veracity of her words.We live in a very shallow culture. I feel this in just a small way with my posts. If I want maximum pageviews I say something shallow but controversial about Apple, Microsoft, or Google. A post about the iPod - any post - will garner more attention than a post probing Oracle's licensing model and what it may mean for enterprises. (Dan Farber notes this same phenomenon in discussing coverage of enterprise versus consumer software.)

Today on the Tube in London I noticed that no one was reading the Independent, Guardian, or Times. Just Metro because it's free and easy.Against this backdrop, Ms. Lessing's counsel seems appropriate and biting:

We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.… Read more

The Japanese word hitotoki is defined as "a single moment; one's moment; a point in time." That is, understandably, the central concept behind Hitotoki.org, a site that has devoted itself to user-contributed "short narratives describing pivotal moments of elation, confusion, absurdity, love or grief--or anything in between--inseparably tied to a specific place" in Tokyo. The site is now in the pre-launch process of creating a New York-centric version, and is calling on writers of all stripes to contribute through the end of August in anticipation of a September debut.

You can consider Hitotoki to … Read more

Recent Walt Disney acquisition Club Penguin isn't the only Antarctic waterfowl in the news on the youth social-networking front this week.

Venerable publishing house Penguin Group has just made a tech-savvy move through a partnership with teen-oriented community site Piczo, in which young Piczo users are encouraged to design covers for a selection of classic books and submit them to a competition pool.

The contest, called "Piczo My Penguin," runs for the next four weeks. It offers up six book titles, each one chosen by a trendy music act such as Razorlight, Beck or Goldspot: Alice in … Read more

Considering the medieval-fantasy appearance of much of the World of Warcraft universe, I suppose it's not that surprising that WoW-obsessed high school students would start using the game to enhance their English and history class projects. And here we have it: some kid actually put the game to good use and turned it into a machinima platform for a re-enactment of the Pardoner's Tale from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

If you consider medieval humor to be unspeakably vulgar, well, then, ye be warned. And if old English literature isn't your preferred form of game video, you … Read more