Karen's Book Nook

My little “purse book” was Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Character or Less by Nick Douglas.

About the book:

Product Description:

New York Magazine proclaims, “Twitter is the hot web company right now…the Next Big Thing;” the New York Times calls it “one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet;” Time magazine claims “Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app;” and Newsweek notes that “Suddenly, it seems as though all the world?s a-twitter.”

Since its creation in March 2006, Twitter has unleashed a torrent of self-expression from its six million members around the world, who send and read each others? “tweets,” messages up to 140 characters in length. Friends use the site to make plans; relatives use it to stay connected; politicians use it to lobby for votes; and humorists use it to perfect their craft. In fact, Twitter users have reinvented the classic medium of the witticism in a site where anyone can be a Dorothy Parker or an Oscar Wilde.

Twitter Wit is the first compilation of Twitter aphorisms, with submissions ranging from quotidian vignettes like “I bet in Sweden the Ikea instructions are in English” to bumper sticker-type quips like “I think the bird of love is the dove. My husband thinks it?s the swallow,” and contributors ranging from celebrities like Shaquille O?Neal, Jimmy Fallon, Penn Jillette, John Cleese, and Steven Fry to regular people with previously unappreciated sharp tongues. Featuring a foreword by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, this authorized anthology of the thousand most most clever and memorable “tweets” relates the diversity of human experience in hilarious bite-sized pieces.

My thoughts: I like little books like this to fill a few minutes here and there and I’m an early Twitter adopter but I just didn’t find many of the tweets all that funny.  Humor is something individualized.  I like the premise of this book, but for me, it just didn’t deliver.

Rating 2/5

Counts towards: Library Challenge, 100 Book Challenge,

Starting the second book in my 2009 Holiday Reading Challenge, A Family Christmas by Caroline Kennedy. It’s an audio book version and I’ll be reading it while switching my decor from Fall to Christmas.

About the book: A Family Christmas Caroline shares the Christmas poetry, prose, scriptural readings, and lyrics that are most dear to her, drawing on authors as diverse as Harper Lee, Nikki Giovanni, Martin Luther King Jr., Billy Collins, John and Yoko, and Charles Dickens. There are also many lesser-known gems throughout and personal treasures from her own family — including a young Caroline’s Christmas list to Santa Claus and a letter from her father as President to a child concerned about Santa’s well-being. This diverse and unique anthology will become a timeless keepsake, and will enrich your heart and mind with the spirit of Christmas.  More here.

My thoughts:  I read this via Audio Book and I think it added so much to it. It began with Caroline Kennedy talking about her Christmases as a child growing up and also gave quite a bit of history about the Christmas holiday, Santa Claus, traditions, and Christmases around the world. I honestly learned quite a bit about Christmas that I had never heard before. Then it went in to various essays, memoirs, stories, songs, and poems each read by different readers; some by the authors and some by actors. Once again, reading this via audio book added so much to it!  There’s something to be said for hearing stories from around the world and from different eras read in the voices that were intended.  Since it was a collection set up as an anthology there were natural breaks between stories which were identified by the unique reading styles and voices of the readers.

This will be one that I’ll likely read again and again.

Rating 4.5/5