California Literary Review

Twitterers take on Ulysses: Forget about Ashton Kutcher. James Joyce’s Ulysses, one of the most difficult novels in English, is on Twitter. Two devotees of Ulysses have adapted its 10th chapter to Twitter, which limits users to 140 characters per post. Called Wandering Rocks, the chapter is especially well-suited to Twitter because it follows 19 Dubliners going about their daily business. [Independent]

Kindle Joins a Literary Ritual: Authors Can Autograph It: A recent reading in Manhattan at the Strand bookstore by David Sedaris, whose most recent book is “When You Are Engulfed in Flames,” may have offered a glimpse of the future. A man named Marty who had waited in the book-signing line presented his Kindle, on the back of which Mr. Sedaris, in mock horror, wrote, “This bespells doom.” [NYT]

Bloomsday: Bloomsday, the annual celebration of Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses, is a fine day to remind yourself of his genius. Test your knowledge with our 16 questions for 16 June. [Guardian]

Keeping It Real on Dictionary Row: On Wednesday, a Texas-based media consulting firm announced the birth of the millionth English word, which arrived on June 10, 2009, at 10:22 a.m., Stratford-on-Avon time. The lucky lexeme? “Web 2.0,” which edged out “slumdog,” “octomom” and “N00b,” a disparaging term for video game newbies. Language experts, when asked for comment, found themselves reaching for other words, some of them unprintable. [NYT]

Christian group sues for right to burn gay teen novel: In a scene which appears to have been lifted straight out of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a group of Christians in Wisconsin has launched a legal claim demanding the right to publicly burn a copy of a book for teenagers which they deem to be “explicitly vulgar, racial [sic], and anti-Christian”. The offending book is Francesca Lia Block’s Baby Be-Bop, a young adult novel in which a boy, struggling with his homosexuality, is beaten up by a homophobic gang. [Guardian]

The literary antecedents of ‘Up’: The title of the new Disney/Pixar movie “Up,” as well as its signature image of a house floating beneath thousands of tethered balloons, reminds us how frequently the theme of Lightness appears in children’s literature. From Mary Poppins to Peter Pan, from Tarzan swinging on vines to Harry Potter scooting on his broomstick, children’s stories seem to feature the quick, the lithe and the aerial. [Los Angeles Times]