In a special Google Docs demonstration online, you can collaborate on a story with Charles Dickens, Friedrich Nietzsche, William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe.

As you type your text into the demo box, these writers will add little flourishes and quotes to your story.

We created a short story with the help of Dickens and Nietzsche, click on the image embedded above to see the collaboration in action. Who will you write with? (Link via)

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Google has created a Google Doodle celebrating author and illustrator Edward Gorey‘s 88th birthday.

Gorey established his artistic career working as a book designer at Doubleday Anchor. From there, he went on to write and illustrate more than one hundred books. He wrote under a number of pseudonyms; two of them, Ogdred Weary and Mrs. Regera Dowdy, are anagrams of his actual name.

Here’s more from The Huffington Post: “With a distinct style, often described as ‘whimsical’ and ‘grim’, Gorey’s pen and ink illustrations often depicted animals, as is shown in the Google doodle. The doodle also pays homage to Gorey’s most famous book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, which depicts the deaths of 26 children, each representing a different letter of the alphabet.”

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Held in the Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Gallery of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the display will include works that were influenced by Dickens’ writing. Nearly 30 illustrators contributed projects to the exhibit. Some of the pieces on view include watercolor paintings, original sheet music and Dickens’ own memoranda book.

Here’s more from the release: “The exhibition looks at characters across Dickens’s career, from beloved novels like A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield to lesser-know works including Martin Chuzzlewit and Dombey and Son…Also on display: an 1867 pocket diary filled with the code Dickens used to communicate with his mistress, Ellen Ternan; a couture gown by Prabal Gurung, a contemporary fashion designer inspired by the decayed elegance of Great Expectations‘s Miss Havisham; and recordings from the special collections of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.”

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the $119 Kindle Paperwhite WiFi eReader at a Santa Monica press conference today. The 3G edition will cost $179. AppNewser has more about the new Kindle Fire HD that was also revealed at the event.

It began with a television spot showing Amazon delivery boxes on a stoop. “We’re the people with a smile on the box,” it read, reminding this GalleyCat editor of a famous New Yorker cover.

Bezos explained: “People don’t want gadgets anymore, they want services. They want services that improve over time” and introduced Kindle Paperwhite. The reading device has 25 percent more contrast compared to the original device and 62 percent more pixels per page. It has capacitive touch and a new front light system that Amazon took four years to develop.

“It’s exactly light ambient light,” he said. It can get eight weeks of battery life, even when the device is lit. He demonstrated the tool with George R. R. Martin‘s best selling novel, Game of Thrones. The device also tells how many minutes of reading you have left in a book. You can also “x-ray” a title, seeing characters and key terms in the digital book.

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What’s your favorite kind of book? We’ve created a giant flowchart to help you browse the top 50 free eBooks at Project Gutenberg.

Click the image above to see a larger version of the book map. Your choices range from Charles Dickens to Jane Austen, from Sherlock Holmes to needlework. Below, we’ve linked to all 50 free eBooks so you can start downloading right now. The books are available in all major eBook formats.

Follow this link to see an online version of the flowchart, complete with links to the the individual books.

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How do you know where to start reading a new author? The Book Riot team hopes to raise $25,000 on Kickstarter for a new book that will help you answer that question. We’ve embedded a video about Start Here above–what do you think?

Here’s more about the project: “[Start Here] tells you how to read your way into 25 amazing authors from a wide range of genres–children’s books to classics, contemporary fiction to graphic novels. Each chapter presents an author, explains why you might want to try them, and lays out a 3-4 book reading sequence designed to help you experience fully what they have to offer. It’s a fun, accessible, informative way to enrich your reading life.”

Start Here will be available in both print and eBook formats. Book Riot has assembled a team of writers, critics, and bloggers to write the essays. The final book will definitely feature guides to the works of  Toni Morrison, David Foster Wallace, Margaret Atwood, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Philip Roth.

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CraveOnline‘s Brad Hansen remixed the audio track from the Dark Knight Rises trailer with scenes from Disney’s The Lion King–earning nearly two million views for his oddly captivating parody.

We’ve embedded the video above–what do you think?

If you want to learn more about the movie, read about how Charles Dickens‘ A Tale of Two Cities inspired director Christopher Nolan and download a free copy of the eBook.

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Have you done your homework for the next Batman movie? We’ve uncovered one free (and unexpected) eBook you should read to prepare for the release of The Dark Knight Rises next week (movie trailer embedded above).

As he created his third epic Batman adaptation, director Christopher Nolan was inspired by Charles Dickens‘ classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities. His screenwriting partner (and brother) Jonathan Nolan explained in an interview:

I was looking to old good books and good movies. Good literature for inspiration… What I always felt like we needed to do in a third film was, for lack of a better term, go there. All of these films have threatened to turn Gotham inside out and to collapse it on itself. None of them have actually achieved that until this film. ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ was, to me, one of the most harrowing portrait of a relatable, recognizable civilization that completely folded to pieces with the terrors in Paris in France in that period. It’s hard to imagine that things can go that badly wrong.

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Google has created a Google Doodle in honor of beloved author Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday.

The image embedded above features several of Dickens’ most iconic characters, including Ebeneezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol and Pip from Great Expectations. When users click on the image at the Google homepage, they are taken to a page with Google Books listings for Dickens’ works including A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.

Here’s more about the birthday from The Washington Post: “Prince Charles [is] expected to visit London’s Dickens Museum. Actors who reportedly are scheduled to give readings Tuesday in Britain include Ralph Fiennes (who will play Abel Magwitch in the upcoming film of Dickens’s Great Expectations), Gillian Anderson (TV’s Great Expectations) and Sheila Hancock (Bleak House), as well as Simon Callow (Christmas Carol: The Movie) performing in Dickens’s birthplace of Portsmouth, Hampshire.”

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The journalist and author passed away last month after a battle with cancer. If Hitchens’ tribute to a great author inspires you to read some books, follow this link to download free eBooks from Charles Dickens.

Here’s an excerpt: “It is all there to emphasize the one central and polar and critical point that Dickens wishes to enjoin on us all: whatever you do—hang on to your childhood! He was true to this in his fashion, both in ways that delight me and in ways that do not. He loved the idea of a birthday celebration, being lavish about it, reminding people that they were once unborn and are now launched. This is bighearted, and we might all do a bit more of it.”

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Over at Abe Books, a satirical essay reimagined the covers of 18 popular books to feature cats.

These cats now grace the covers of A Tale of Two Kitties (Charles Dickens‘ A Tale of Two Cities), Lord of the Fleas (William Golding‘s Lord of the Flies) and The Girl with the Kitten Tattoo (Stieg Larsson‘s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). What other books could use this theme?

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The collection includes the trio of ghosts who haunt Ebenezer Scrooge. Ritter has also created dolls of Jane Eyre from Charlotte Bronte‘s famous novel and Mrs. Haversham from Dickens’ Great Expectations.

Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit come as a matching set. Flavorpill made a list of other dolls, including Shel Silverstein, J.R.R. Tolkien and Joyce Carol Oates. Above, we’ve embedded a Mark Twain doll. What’s your favorite?

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The New Yorker

Here’s more about the event: “a week of discussing Dickens, sleeping in dormitories, and eating in a cafeteria, bringing together literary scholars, teachers, and students, with readers who love Dickens. Every year the campers read a different book. This year, it was “Great Expectations,” which also happens to have been a recent selection of Oprah’s Book Club.”

This GalleyCat editor loves, loves, loves the idea of going to summer camp to study your favorite author. What author do you think deserves their own summer camp? If you like the idea of Dickens camp, the project depends on donations during these tough economic times. Follow this link to donate.

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The nonfiction book tells the story of an affair between Great Expectations author Charles Dickens (pictured, via) and actress Nelly Ternan. According to The Guardian, Abi Morgan wrote the script. The release is set for late 2012, coinciding with Dickens’ 200th birthday.

Here’s more from the article: “Dickens was 45 when he met Ternan, then 18, in 1857. Their relationship remained secret from the public, even after Dickens’s separation from his wife the following year. Ternan travelled with the author for the rest of his life; after his death, she married a man 12 years her junior, having disguised her own age as 23, rather than 37.”

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Here’s the tweet referencing a classic character from Charles Dickens‘ Great Expectations: “Let’s give ‘undateable” a bookish twist. We’ll start: wearing a wedding dress every day since being left at the altar. #UndateableInLit.” The Huffington Post made a slideshow of some great examples.

Add your undatable character to the Undateable In Lit hashtag. We contributed Don Quixote–an undatable literary character who wears armor, wrecks windmills and spends too much time playing LARP games. Follow these links to read free eBook versions of Great Expectations or Don Quixote.

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