The idea behind Twitterlit is simple enough, and the website that hosts it is also beautifully spare. Twice a day, every day, Debra Hamel posts the first line of a book. Just the first line of a book - no author or title. It is accompanied by an Amazon link and by clicking through intrigued readers can discover the source of the quote and find out more about the book. Neat.
What makes Twitterlit stand out - and gives it its tweetiness - is the number of different ways lovers of literary teasers can get their twice-daily fix delivered. Don't want to go to the website? Then sign up via the social networking site Twitter, add Twitterlit as a friend and get your lines over your mobile phone, through IM or in your Twitter reader. Or subscribe via RSS or get it on a widget.
The first lines chosen come from a wide range of titles - classics and new reads, different genres, fiction and non-fiction - and the only overarching theme so far seems to be a curious fascination with books about death and dead bodies. There is also a form to submit your own choice of first line for consideration.
It's an intriguingly random way to discover new reads - Alan Alda's biography suddenly becomes a much more appealing prospect when you know it starts with, "My mother didn't try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that."
