Readers have been voting for the book which they’ll be tackling for the past month, with Neil Gaiman‘s fantasy novel American Gods eventually triumphing over titles including Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.“The aim with One Book, One Twitter is – like the one city, one book programme which inspired it – to get a zillion people all reading and talking about a single book. It is not, for instance, an attempt to gather a more selective crew of book lovers to read a series of books and meet at established times to discuss,” explained Howe at Wired.com. “Usually such ‘Big Read’ programs are organised around geography. Seattle started the trend for collective reading in 1998 when zillions of Seattlites all read Russell Banks’s book, Sweet Hereafter. Chicago followed suit with To Kill a Mockingbird a few years later. This Big Read is organised around Twitter, and says to hell with physical limitations.”Gaiman, whose novel follows the story of ex-convict Shadow, released from prison and embarking on a bizarre journey across America with the mysterious Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a former god, said he thought One Book, One Twitter was “a great idea – a sort of worldwide book club”.
Read the entire article here.
Follow the project on Twitter by following @1B1T2010 and the hashtag #1b1t.Image Source