A collaborative reading project launching today on Twitter with Neil Gaiman's American Gods could become the world's largest book club.
City-wide reading projects are nothing new: Seattle started the trend in 1998 with Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter, and Chicago got its citizens engrossed in the world of Scout Finch. But what if you could get the whole world to read the same book and compare notes and ideas with one another?
That’s the hope of One Book, One Twitter, a new project devised by Wired writer Jeff Howe. Launching today, the project’s goal is to get “more people reading, more people talking and more people generally appreciating the written word,” Howe explained in Wired. The brand-new Twitter account for the project, 1B1T2010, had over 5,500 new followers within just five hours of launching.
The first book, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, was selected through a crowdsourced poll, and the author is excited to be a part of the worldwide experiment.
“I’m kind of thrilled that I get to help kick off something this new, and I’m going to do all I can to help,” Gaiman wrote on his blog. “Which, today, will consist of making sure I let all the publishers around the world who have American Gods in print know about this, and, over the next few months, sending helpful or apologetic tweets to people who are stuck, offended, or very, very confused.”
To get involved in the worldwide reading experiment, you can follow One Book, One Twitter at @1B1T2010 and pick up a copy of Gaiman’s novel, and you’ll soon be discussing plot points with fellow readers based everywhere from Manhattan to Mumbai. And if you have questions for the author, send him a note at @neilhimself—but be nice. Writers have feelings, too.