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Tic-tac-toe. It’s a familiar game, and we all know the players: the X, the O, locked in an inevitable struggle for control of a 3 x 3 grid. But what’s at the route of their seemingly endless conflict? Is it a friendly rivalry, a long-term grudge, a bitter enmity…or something more complicated?

For the creation of Tic-Tac-Tome, the first-ever book that can play a game of tic-tac-toe, the two adversaries came together for their first major project since the revival of Hollywood Squares. This seemed like an ideal time to try and square their differences.

But even though these two characters sometimes stand in for hugs and kisses, their feelings about each other don’t by any means fit into neat little boxes.

Photo via Prose, Poetry & Photographs

Happy birthday, Franz Kafka! The great author celebrates his 131th birthday today (last year, Google celebrated with this amazing illustration for his 130th), and we've decided to throw a little giveaway in his honor. 

Go ahead and enter the Rafflecopter below for a chance to win a copy of The Meowmorphosis, our lastest mashup, which takes Kafka's literary masterpiece and adds slightly more kittens. 

Good luck! 

THE MEOWMORPHOSIS by Franz Kafka and Coleridge Cook

KINDLE / NOOK / KOBO / IBOOKSTORE

Via New York Public Library's Facebook

Libraries have always been an important part of my life. When I was younger, going to the library was a regular occurrence for my family. Since we lived in New York City, there were a few of them that we would frequent and each one was special in its own right. The one closest to us had three floors and I remember climbing up and down those stairs to the different levels, each section brimming with books.

This was the first library I became familiar with and I can still picture it even though I haven’t been there in a very long time. One thing I’ll never forget is the feeling when a librarian guides you to the book you had inquired about, takes it off the shelf, and puts it in your hands. It’s a magical transaction, like being given a ticket to journey to another world.

The library of my teenage years was in a turn of the century Carnegie building and also the largest library in my borough. One time, I spent hours there with my father collecting data for a science project, something that would have taken a fraction of the time if the internet had existed, but it’s a happy memory that I would not have had if that were the case. When I was old enough, I went there by myself to work on research projects for school, looking for resources as I navigated the stacks.

Perfectly timed for the book's five year anniversary, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies is currently a Kindle Deal of the Month. Pick it up for under $2.99 throughout the month of April! 

The prequel, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls, and sequel, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After, are also both discounted, down to $2.99. And so is Ben H. Winters New York Times bestselling Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters! 

And in case you missed last month's various celebratory posts, you can check out Thom Dunn's wonderful three-part editorial on the history of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies here on the blog, as well as a bunch of fantastic Jane Austen-era inspired crafts.