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Today concludes my fourth full week on Twitter, the social-networking crack du jour. Its round-the-clock quality was partially summed up by one pal’s plaintive tweet last night: “Does anybody here ever go to sleep?” I don’t think anyone answered her; they were too busy trying to catch up on the last one hundred tweets or so.

I could go into various aspects of Twitiquette and what I find most useful about Twitter, but I don’t want to bore you all — I won’t do that unless you ask me. I will continue to bring you LitTwits, however, because this is the fastest, easiest, and most efficient way of finding out which stories are getting my Twitter “flock” of book/publishing folks talking (or tweeting). 

This week’s still-worthy LitTwits:

A new Bat Segundo podcast with Author Catherine M. Valente – @drmabuse

Just when you thought the Kindle 2 was all that, here comes Kindle 3 — @sarahw

Obama’s favorite theologian, Niebuhr, discussed on NPR — @yalepress

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I’m planning my activities for the (coming up all too soon) Virginia Festival of the Book, and I’m happy to see that quite of few of our former and future interviewees will be in attendance there, too. 

One of the ones I was happiest to see is James Mathews, whose short-story collection Last Known Position was our latest Book of the Week. He’ll be appearing at VA Book on a panel called “Short Stories: Men with a Mission” on Wednesday, March 18th, at 6 p.m. in the New Dominion Bookshop on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall. 

I introduced Last Known Position as our Book of the Week, and there are still a few slots left in the 30-person random giveaway, in case you’d like a shot at nabbing a copy. 

We also have my interview with James Mathews live, here. 

I know that Mathews, who has managed to combine military experience with literary life, will be an interesting member of this panel — hope that anyone coming to VA Book considers attending “Men with a Mission!”

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You can probably guess what I’m going to say: Now read the book!!!

We all know that “Slumdog Millionaire” swept the Oscars, and Slumdog Fever seems to be sweeping America, too: The strains of the film’s final song, “Jai Ho,” are all over the airwaves right now. (By the way, did you know that “Jai Ho” means “May you be victorious?” Yeah, me neither, until I read it here.)

When I was interviewing Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni the other night, we touched on “Slumdog,” since Divakaruni sits on the board of Pratham, a charity that brings books, teachers, and literacy materials to India’s worst slums, including the one that the adorable little child actors run through in the movie. Divakaruni said “Remember when those children were fighting over The Three Musketeers? It’s so hard to have your own books and your own stories in a place like that.”

That’s why I believe if you loved “Slumdog Millionaire,” you owe it to yourself and to Jamal to read the book on which it’s based: Q&A by Vikas Swarup. But I’ll warn you: You won’t find some of your favorite scenes, there. 

But you may find that some of the book’s scenes become your favorites. 

Has anyone else read Q&A? Did you prefer it, or the movie? I’d love to hear from you.

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Good morning, everyone, and Wednesday greetings. This was supposed to be posted on Monday, but there wasn’t enough coffee, or cold medicine, in the world…

There’s not enough chicken soup in the world, either: At least not for my family today. We’re all down with colds/respiratory infections, and while Mr. Bethanne and I have to work regardless, both Mini Mavens are home from school. Fortunately, when I went out to interview Amy Dickinson at Politics & Prose over the weekend (that interview, with text and video, coming this week!), I bought the younger MM some reading material, so she’s happy. The older MM is curled up with a novel, and Mr. Bethanne is reading The New Yorker. I’ll be reading again, too, as soon as I manage to get this post live.

Today’s question: What do you read when you’re sick?

Again, this is a random giveaway. The first 30 respondents will be entered into a random generator and we’ll pull out 10 who will receive 2 new hardcover books each. Have fun, and thank you — I hope I’ll be back to a normal posting schedule tomorrow.

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Remember, you can always follow me: @thebookmaven on Twitter.

Here is some of this week’s news that was “tweeted” by my “tweeps” on my new beloved social-networking tool:

Which will win: Strip and Knit With Style, or Baboon Metaphysics? (from @sarahw)

“I try to forbid myself from using the word authenticity because I don’t actually know what the hell it is” (from @idtheory)

Cock-a-doodle-doo! It’s the Tournament of Books! (from @readerville)

Here’s why I love Twitter: Besides getting the above and plenty of other links to book news, I had tweetversations with a couple of author pals, found out what several of my favorite fellow bloggers are reading, and kept up on book events around the country. If I want to add info from more tweeple about cooking, travel, photography, politics, knitting…I can! But I don’t have to…and by self-curating a good Twitter list, I know that I won’t waste my time with tweets about “Going to the supermarket” or “The copier broke, again.” 

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If you have the perfect opening line for a novel (and not much else!), here’s your chance: Enter it into this contest and you might just win a Virginia Festival of the Book 15th-anniversary book bag, perfect for stuffing with all of the titles you’ll want to read before attending. There will be Mixed-Bag Contests every week until the Festival Itself, so enter this one by February 25th, and then get ready for the next!

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It isn’t often that you find someone with active-duty military experience, let alone active-duty military experience during war-zone deployment, writing serious fiction today (once upon a time, of course, far more writers had military experience as a matter of course due to the draft). James Mathews, who was twice deployed overseas with the Air National Guard, now has his MFA in fiction and the blessing of the fiction world, having won the prestigious Katherine Anne Porter Prize. His short stories are offbeat and quirky, but also based on his experiences within and looking in at the American military community, both overseas and on the homefront. I hope you enjoy hearing him speak for a few minutes about how he melds his disparate worlds.

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I try to maintain a relatively neutral stance about our Books of the Week; after all, I’m not reviewing them. I’m interviewing their authors! However, I do choose the authors who appear on this site, and I do tend to choose authors whose work I am interested in, regardless of my critical views on that work.

Sometimes I don’t know anything about an author, however: We get a recommendation, or a request, and I have to read a book first and decide if it’s the right kind of material for “Author, Author!” This was the case with James Mathews, whose short-story collection Last Known Position was published by University of North Texas Press (not my usual source for literary fiction). I knew two things when I started reading: One, that Mathews’ work had won the prestigious Katherine Anne Porter Prize for short fiction; Two, that Mathews had been in the U.S. Air Force.

By the time I finished reading, I was sure of one thing: Mathews is a truly gifted writer. His deft plots are told in voices so unassuming that they lull the reader into suspending disbelief, only to have the stories’ coldly cynical twists slap them back into reality. Except it’s not reality; it’s fiction… Shudder. 

I’ll got out on a limb and say I believe you’ll love these stories, and I’ve got ten copies of Last Known Position to give away. Randomly, natch. We’ll select ten comments at random from the first 30 left answering this question: What was the last short story you read OR Who is your favorite short-story writer?

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I have a bit of a special relationship with the Virginia Festival of the Book, because I earned my master’s degree in English at the University of Virginia and lived in beautiful Charlottesville for five years of my life in all. VA Book is an annual opportunity to head down to “C’Ville” for a few days when it’s not overrun by garden-seeking tourists and hang out with some of the nicest people in the book world (yours truly not necessarily included, but they let me attend, anyway). 

This year I’m not only one of the Official Festival Bloggers — I’m on two different panels. I’ll be on this one as a panelist (although I may not fulfill the title) and this one as moderator (can’t wait; should be very well attended, as usual). 

I’ll be blogging more about the Festival, as well as linking to my fellow bloggers and perhaps even posting some of our Tweets in a Special LitTwits post from time to time…(remember, they’re not the LitTwits; the news posts are!). Are any readers out there planning to attend this year’s VA Book Festival? What local literary festivals, wherever you may be, do you attend?

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As most of us in Washington, DC, know, yesterday was the final print edition of our beloved Washington Post “Book World” review supplement. 

No one can be happy that this section is gone. Or can we?

First of all, let’s not be caught up in the idea that the section’s pages have disappeared due to lack of advertising dollars. As Motoko Rich noted in this NYT piece, advertising dollars were never what kept newspaper specials afloat, anyway. What did keep Book World afloat for many years was the support of Don Graham; perhaps Marcus Brauchle has decided to do the same thing, only in a different form: online.

This may not please folks who preferred to recline with print rather than with a laptop, and I understand that. We’re not yet to the point where e-reading devices mimick the ease and ergonomics of bending, folding, and mashing newsprint pages to our liking. As reader after reader has noted in blog comments and news story comments about the change in Book World, people looked forward to curling up with the section each week and learning about books they wanted to read, books they might never read but needed to know about, and commentary on the literary life.

All of these things will still be available in the new, Web-based universe of Book World. To me, here’s the rub: We all realize it’s easier for us right now to read printed, easily flipped pages. We want our newsprint, and we find it easier to drink coffee while we’re holding a newspaper section in our hand than when we’re tapping away at a keyboard (be that keyboard on a laptop, a Kindle, or an iPhone).

If we really, truly, madly, and deeply care about Book World — or any other book coverage — will we follow it down the cyberpath? Because as far as I’m concerned, nothing will kill off thoughtful, smart, timely, and lively book coverage than everyone abandoning it as soon as its familiar form changes. 

If you love The Washington Post Book World, keep reading it — and other book coverage — online. Who knows? You might even become adept, as I already am, at drinking coffee at the same time, too.

Disagree with me! Tell me I’m crazy. Or describe your own struggle with this transition. We’re all in this together, or we won’t get to hear about books at all — that, my friends, would be the real tragedy.

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