I’ve been particularly interested, of late, in Penguin UK’s new We Tell Stories website. Recently (and realistically for a decade or so), the publishing industry’s lips have been flapping about e-books. Will there be an end to the ink and paper novel? Will the industry collapse when the death of a million trees is pulled out from underneath it? Truthfully, I’m a purist, I’d miss that dead tree in my hands. Penguin, however, has come up with a totally new idea with the help of a company called Six to Start.

Here’s the gist: instead of designing an electronic book that mimics ink and paper with e-ink and its ilk, Six to Start has designed an ARG game where the content is stories written by some of Penguin’s brightest authors. The result is stories told through Google Maps, blogs like Livejournal and WordPress, and now a choose-your-own-adventure styled fairy tale. Unfortunately, I don’t live in England or I would be able to explore the real time events as well. Apparently, all of these stories together are leading towards a secret story about a girl named Alice, whose blog can be found here. Readers are supposed to interact with the games as much as possible, which in the case of blogs means that they can e-mail the characters and receive messages back.

What I find most interesting about all this is the likelihood that while e-books don’t work, people will spend hours playing on the Internet. A real e-book may look more like the interfaces that we are already accustomed to: who doesn’t spend hours on Google Maps trying to figure out directions?

I’m sure there’s more to say about this, and I will as it continues to move along. Three more weeks to go, I wonder what they have planned next.

I’ve been meaning to start this for awhile, but my work is so rarely done.

To get this game off to a good start, I thought I’d mention the book I just started reading. I’ve heard a lot about Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but I’d never felt like reading it until I discovered this edition:

It’s one of the new Penguin Classics Deluxe covers and there’s a whole series, featuring covers by many a talented artist. I like this one best, if only because it’s done by a Canadian. Although, the fact that the inside flap features depictions of all of D.H.’s relationships with women, captioned with “Whom Aside from Frieda D.H.L. F**ked,” also helps. Can’t wait to update my collection with Cold Comfort Farm and Candide.

I think Penguin’s fallen a little behind, however, as all they have to say about their snazzy new outfits is: “We’ve got some of the best graphic artists to design our jackets this month. They’re really fun and rather great.”

Umm…duh?