R U reading this novel?

The Globe and Mail ran a story this week on a new novel published in Finland that is entirely composed of cell phone text messages.

The Last Messages tells the story of a fictitious executive in Finland who resigns from his job and travels throughout Europe and India, keeping in touch with his friends and relatives only through text messages.

His messages, and the replies — roughly 1,000 altogether — are listed in chronological order in the 332-page novel written by Finnish author Hannu Luntiala. The texts are rife with grammatical errors and abbreviations commonly used in such messages.

“I believe that, at the end of the day, a text message may reveal much more about a person than you would initially think,” said Luntiala, who also is head of a company that keeps databases on people living in Finland.

Reading between the lines on a larger scale, the fact that text messaging has reached the realm of literature may also reveal more about our society than we would think.

Please, sir, I want some more Charles Dickens

In what seems to be a push to get young readers interested in Charles Dickens (whose birthday is Feb. 7), the BBC website is featuring an interactive game and an animated version of the author’s life.

In the game, “Survive Dickens’ London”, you walk along Victorian London streets, meeting various characters from Dickens’ novels and learning facts about his life and the standard of living in the Victorian age (if you’re not careful you may even catch cholera).

The animated short of Dickens’ life is brief and somewhat amusing. Once the cartoon is over, viewers may use the scene selector to get details on the people and historical events. The website also includes links to more in-depth sites about Dickens, such as The Dickens Museum, the Charles Dickens’ Birthplace Museum, and Charles Dickens Literature, where the author’s works are available online.

Dickens’ work recently made the cut as essential reading after the British education secretary was forced to defend changes to the curriculum for 11- to 14-year-olds (previously noted by Quillblog here).

Friday photo: Doull Books

This unique bit of book sculpture is one of the attractions of the used bookstore John W. Doull, Bookseller in Halifax, or JWD’s, as it is fondly known by Haligonians. Although it may look like someone shot a cannon through the store, the installation was actually created using a table saw to cut through books that were glued and screwed together and then placed in the wall. (Photo courtesy of Flickr pool member — and bookstore owner — John W. Doull)

Every Friday, Quillblog highlights a recent photo from our new Quill & Quire Flickr Pool. Have you recently attended a book reading, library event, or author appearance? If you’ve got photos of the Canadian book scene, we’d love to see them. Sign up through Flickr and submit your images.