It took me a while, but I finally got around to reading Mark Twain, starting with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which I finished this week.

I figured the author was good, given all the praise that’s continuously heaped on him. But I didn’t know he’d be this good. I had no idea he was as laugh-out-loud funny as Jerry Seinfeld (even more so, maybe).

More than that, Twain has the uncanny ability to turn even the most mundane occurrences into entertaining literature (i.e. a poodle playing with a beetle). He is a master of the English language and a joy to read. As a bonus, he’s a modern day Confucius, sharing wisdom and life hacks throughout this 184 page book.

Here are 10 of my favorite passages: (more…)

Especially if you need of a little more color in your life or like Mark Twain. Either way, it’s widescreen win.

This story is so win, particularly for the Mark Twain reference at the end:

“One of the most profound transformations we can learn from games,” he says, “is how to turn the sense that someone has ‘failed’ into the sense that they ‘haven’t succeeded yet.’”

Some schools are starting to borrow gamers’ system of quests and rewards, and the principles could be applied to lots of enterprises, especially colossal collaborations online. By one estimate, Dr. McGonigal notes, creating Wikipedia took eight years and 100 million hours of work, but that’s only half the number of hours spent in a single week by people playing World of Warcraft.

“Whoever figures out how to effectively engage them first for real work is going to reap enormous benefits,” Dr. McGonigal predicts.

…

Researchers will need the skills exhibited by Tom Sawyer when he persuaded his friends it would be a joyous privilege to whitewash a fence.

Tom discovered, as Twain explained, “that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” The ultimate challenge, when trying to extract work from the World of Warcraft questers and other players, will be persuading them that it’s still just a game.

Awesome.