TAOC Literary - The Art Of Conversation app for iPhone and iPad

Books and reading are everywhere these days, with the growing number of writers’ festivals and book clubs attracting huge memberships and popping up everywhere. But books and reading have also always been an integral part of learning and education.

Now, there’s a new way for readers – whether recreational readers or students - to discuss all aspects of this passion, with the release of a new game, The Art of Conversation: Literary Edition.

TAOC® creators Louise Howland and Keith Lamb have adapted the concept to offer new angles and avenues to think, and talk, about books. TAOC® comes with 300 starter questions developed by its creators, with the assistance of well-respected literature teacher Leila Bryant. Like all TAOC® editions, it’s not a quiz – it’s not about who knows the most. Rather, it’s a communication tool that draws on your own experiences, thoughts and reactions to facilitate fascinating discussions.

The game can be used by teachers or tutors as a way of sparking conversation with and between their students on different aspects of a single literary work, or a collection of works (such as poems or short stories). All students can research allocated characteristics of the same work, or compare characteristics of different works.

Students may be asked to use TAOC® questions as a starting point for a presentation, talk, debate or essay. The possibilities are endless – and many ideas, suiting students of different ages and abilities, are provided with the game. The resource is ideal for students, and can also be adapted to book clubs, friends, family, workmates or even solitary readers. It covers all genres – fiction, poetry, drama, biography, autobiography, science fiction, fantasy, crime, romance, historical writing –essentially, the whole library!

Comprehensive hyperlinked words and phrases introduce students painlessly to many terms specific to literature. Suitable for primary students through to adult.

“What is reading,” wrote Walter Savage Landor, “but silent conversation?”

Disraeli – no slouch in the writing trade himself – noted that “There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.” Put them together, and you get TAOC®.