Twitter and Side Reading

I've recently joined Twitter—not as addictive as advertised, but really helpful finding new books from the awesome likes of New Directions, Yale Press, Knopf, NYRB Classics, UMinn Press and Verso. But I'm even more interested to see what other bloggers are doing with the site.

Most publicize their new posts with a tweet, which seems redundant if you read by RSS, but I guess a lot of people still don't, so perhaps it's a sort of auxiliary feed.

But many are also, it seems, using it not to reproduce their blog but to supplement it: to offload the quick-link type posts to Twitter, rather than ginning up a full post to say that I wish this would happen more often, for instance, that this is a fun exercise, and that this review looks good.

I think I'd like to do that as well, but I also think I'd find it kind of amusing to "tweet" about my side reading as well—books that, for one reason or another, don't really need a full post, or to speak more honestly, books that I haven't been creative enough to post about. Starting off, I'll post them here, and not on twitter, although in the future I'll probably just post them there.

Here they are, in 140 characters or fewer:

Y Last Man: the ending isn't dissatisfying b/c i wanted something else, but b/c a self-pitying author shouldn't be his own deus ex machina.

Top Girls, Churchill: overlapping dial - bizarre, why - williams-like plot - ogue - did she need the - weird first scene - confusion?

Venus, S-L Parks: is a comparison to Lynch's Elephant Man out of place? Victorian exoticism, strange attractions, physical "deformities."

Anna in the Tropics: of all the narratives of adultery, why Anna K? Doesn't this undermine the idea that Latin culture bestows its own gifts

Alexander Plays, Kennedy: Ohio and Fanon--fascinating range. Need to read Senghor. Powerful stuff--reminded me of Wallace Shawn (?)

Cane, Toomer: the best is in the middle; last section got away from me. alternating poetry and prose almost too regular; needs more chaos.

Sentimental Journey, Sterne: Some say better than Shandy; not close. Moments of sentimentality are more moving, but comedy not as sharp.