Yahoo News interviewed this GalleyCat editor about a crop of rushed books about basketball star Jeremy Lin. We singled out “Jeremy Lin: Advice from Sun Tzu on Basketball and the Art of War!!!“–a $1.99 “e-pamphlet” that basically repackages quotes from a public domain classic and addresses them to “modern day basketball warrior Jeremy Lin.”
We do not recommend buying this eBook, but we think it has created a new literary genre: “The possibilities for this mash-up genre are literally endless: ‘How Sherlock Holmes Solved the Amanda Knox Case!!!’ or ‘What Rick Santorum Can Learn from the Poetry of Walt Whitman!!!'”
What famous public domain books should be repackaged as advice books for celebrities? Share your suggestions (complete with triple exclamation points) at the #linerature hashtag, we’ll post our favorites.