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It's my last day, and there's one thing I might as well let you in on before I go: I'm mildly infamous for being the Twitter Novel Guy. That is, I originally released The French Revolution on Twitter last Bastille Day in 140-character blasts as a way for readers to test drive my novel on a sentence level. I also interacted directly with readers (rare!) and build some semblance of enthusiasm for my work. (Though I'll be the first to admit that reading a whole book on Twitter is highly inconvenient.) The story got noticed, and I later landed a book deal.

I spent a few months huddling with my publisher to figure out how to build on my Twitter background in a way that enhances my novel without undermining it. The last thing I want is to get pigeonholed as the technology gimmick guy — I'd much rather go down as an author who was inventive both in his writing and in finding new ways to connect with readers.

In that spirit, I'm launching a free French Rev iPhone App — available now in Apple's App Store, thanks to Ricoh Innovations. Here's how it works: zap any page in the book with your iPhone camera to unlock bonus content, like videos of me explaining locales featured in the book, or recipes for the exquisite chocolate cakes I write about, or neck-tingling music that inspired a particular scene. You can even unlock a secret chapter by zapping page 62. Think of it as the equivalent of DVD bonus features, accessed through "clickable paper." And it's completely optional; the book works just fine without it.

As far as I can tell, nobody's ever put out an app that bridges paper books with digital content like this. I'm curious to see if you think this sounds intriguing, or distracting, or completely irrelevant — please, lay it on me. You can let me know through comments here, through my website, or Facebook page.

Thanks for sticking with my various diatribes, and thanks to Powell's for letting me rant. I'll conclude with a terrific quote from French revolutionary Georges Danton, which my dad recited at my book launch party this week. It's a rousing summary of the book I tried to write, and the moment in history it attempts to capture.

"We need audacity, still more audacity, and audacity forever!"

Viva la

Esmerelda Van Twinkle, the protagonist in my novel The French Revolution, is a morbidly obese pastry chef at a series of ultra-hip San Francisco gourmet restaurants. Esmerelda's my favorite character because (A) she's got boatloads of attitude, and (B) she gets to work with amazing food all day. And if there's one thing most people can agree on, it's that amazing food is a good thing.

(Side note: lest anyone think I'm picking on people with weight problems, allow me to volunteer that I've been battling my weight for pretty much my whole life, and attempted to explore the ins-and-outs of that uphill mind game through Esmerelda's story.)

Thinking up blisteringly imaginative foodie concoctions is way harder than you think. It seemed that whenever I devised a particularly inventive dish for Esmerelda to develop — squid truffle paste, or candy-cane venison stew, or emu casserole slow-cooked with periwinkle nutmeg and served with gingerbread pretzels — the New Yorker food edition would come out with something better. Consider their profile of superchef Grant Aschatz working on a "dessert involving strawberries, Niçoise olives, and essence of violet," or New York chef David Chang's "smear of black nori purée on the bottom of the bowl; then a layer of sea scallops and chanterelles and possibly clams; and then, spooned on top in front of the customer, a soft heap of foaming dashi (kelp and dried-bonito broth), made intentionally unstable with just a little methylcellulose, so that in front of the customer's eyes the bubbles would burst and dissipate into a fishy liquid, at exactly the speed that foam from a wave dissipates onto sand."

Which is pretty much untoppable.

Still, I tried. I sent Esmerelda to a secret culinary boot camp where she learned secrets from a reclusive kitchen demigod. I created a stunning rise to national domination on the back of tongue-lathering, saffron-sprinkled oatmeal cookies, which was necessarily followed by a crushing fall to ignominy at the hands of her mentor. Later, after much soul-searching as a cashier at a copy shop and, later, an up-and-coming New York bagel joint, Esmerelda's creative synapses start firing again at her own restaurant, where she begins churning out breathtaking dishes once more: jalapeno chutney pie, Fluffernutter cake layered with raspberry jam, baked bananas infused with pineapple reduction sauce.

Fun, isn't it? There's something miraculous about food — especially French food — and, of course, this brand of food is vastly different from classics like pork chop and baked potatoes. The combinations are brain-ticklingly wild, so crazy they might actually work.

But the only way to know for sure is to taste them — and until then, our imaginations are left to

It's Bastille Day — the day in 1789 when French revolutionaries stormed the Bastille Prison and kicked off the French Revolution. It's worth noting that there were only seven actual inmates of the prison at the time, and the attackers lost the fight in terms of manpower — 98 attackers killed to just one defender, according to Wikipedia. Far more importantly, the revolutionaries elevated their act of defiance into a source of inspiration, a rallying point, the fuel for the considerable national fire which threw the French way of life into chaos.

It's an important reminder that great, life-changing movements — and great, life-changing books — don't start great. Instead, they germinate as small, fervently loved personal experiences that challenge the status quo, slowly snowballing from small, passionate groups to large, passionate groups, steadily building unstoppable speed.

This Bastille Day, why not read something revolutionary alongside your Bordeaux and triple brie this evening? My debut novel, The French Revolution, is, of course, a highly topical selection, but there are loads of terrific genre-bending, new-thinking works of fiction out there. A few books that have “stormed my Bastille” lately include:

• Tony DuShane's Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk — An insider's view of growing up Jehovah's Witness.
• Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel — A page-turning crime caper set in a fully imagined Jewish settlement in Alaska.
• Tod Goldberg's Other Resort Cities — A hilarious set of stories that hit like speed-induced Sun Belt hallucinations.
• Meredith Norton's Lopsided: A Memoir — A funny memoir about cancer. Seriously.

What are the novels that have revolutionized your

My debut novel The French Revolution is an allegory. Since it's probably been a while since you took high school English, you may be mentally fidgeting right now, striving to recall what exactly an allegory is. Dictionary.com succinctly defines allegory as a "symbolical narrative," but that fails to capture its key selling point — a core element of magic. My favorite allegories are wondrous, if slightly unbelievable tales in which I let myself be swept away because A) it makes life a lot more fun, and B) the underlying narrative says something insightful about how we live.

The first allegories I was exposed to were Aesop's Fables. They're a little simplistic, but when you're a seven-year-old rambunctious redheaded boy like I was, the tale of the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" can really put a fright into you. My top adult allegory is Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which is a modern retelling of the Orpheus myth (which is sort of an allegory itself). Lord of the Flies is often read as an allegory, as are Animal Farm, Moby-Dick, and Waiting for the Barbarians. (Wikipedia has a pretty good list.)

The actual French Revolution was built to be an allegory — unbelievable acts of violence that toppled an established way of life, loaded with pioneering visions and naïve experimentation. The narrative is very Hegelian — forging a national identity (synthesis) after lurching from revolutionary extremes (thesis and antithesis). To me, it's a familiar story about the personal search for identity that many of us set out on, often starting off with a revolt against the status quo (family, tradition), overdoing it in a few directions (careers, partners, etc), and eventually settling into time-tested, intractable self.

A recent review of The French Revolution assigned the lead characters from my novel to figures from the actual revolution, and came to different pairings than I'd envisioned for half of them. But for me, that's half the fun of an allegory — the wiggle room to bend the details to fit your own interpretation while pondering the hard-flowing central idea coursing downstream like fresh snowmelt.

But enough about me — what's your favorite

Bonjour! I'm Matt Stewart, and I'm honored to be your cruise director this week on the Powell's Books blog. I'm here because I wrote a novel — out this week — called The French Revolution. Many people reasonably assume it's a dry, doorstop history loaded with French witticisms and long-winded summary and a dominant tone of snootiness.

Au contraire! It's actually a San Francisco family saga loosely structured on the historical French Revolution. I've created an autocratic, out-of-touch monarchical matriarch; angry, violent "rabble"; a Napoleonic figure, who meets his demise at a proverbial Waterloo; and literary guillotines galore.

Most Americans don't know a whole lot about the French Revolution aside from "Let them eat cake," Les Miserables, and the iconic image of the guillotine. However, when you take a look at the all the crazy stories, it's clear the French Revolution is a pretty spectacular historical event, well worth an allegorical tale.

For a better understanding of just how awesome the French Revolution was, I've created a handy breakdown comparing the landmark French upheaval against its impressive (and personally beneficial) American forerunner. Please bear in mind the unscientific nature of this comparison, noting my obvious French Revolution bias and how I've been inundated with American Revolution propaganda my entire life.

Official Breakdown — French Revolution v. American Revolution

Events:

· French Revolution: Storming the Bastille Prison, executions of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, Waterloo, thousands of public guillotine executions.

· American Revolution: Shot heard round the world, Paul Revere's ride, crossing the Delaware River.

· Winner: French Revolution. Easy call. Killing a monarch alone would do it, but throw in a multinational battle against one of the most successful generals in history and bloody public killings and the deal is sealed. A tough river crossing and a horse ride through town are important American symbols, but relatively innocuous. Also, King George III was not harmed in the making of America; tell that to Louis XVI.

People:

· French Revolution: Queen Marie Antoinette, publicly executed; King Louis XVI, of the infamous Bourbon dynasty; Robespierre and Marat, bloodthirsty revolutionaries; Napoleon, one of the best generals in world history.

· American Revolution: George Washington, one of America's greatest generals and presidents; Founding Fathers ad infinitum; King George III.

· Winner: Tie. Colorful characters everywhere you look — it was a wonderful time to revolt.

Slogan:

· French Revolution: Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite.

· American Revolution: Give me Liberty, or give me death!

· Winner: American Revolution. Patrick Henry's quote gives me chills just reading the Wikipedia article.

Intangibles:

· French Revolution: Ended the Bourbon monarchy; perpetuated liberal democracies and republics; kickstarted secularism; a spectacularly cinematic affair loaded with drama, infighting, backstabbing, and general insanity.

· American Revolution: Installed the world's first modern democracy; began unraveling the British Empire.

· Winner: French Revolution, and it's close. But don't forget the French LIVED in the same place as their oppressor — it's a lot easier to throw a revolt with a 4,000-mile buffer zone. Also, the French had to unlearn monarchical habits that were centuries old; the Americans could start completely fresh. But the biggest difference for me involves style points — where, as usual, the French cleaned up. Guillotines beat a fife and drum corps any day of the week.

Overall Winner: The French Revolution

I'm looking forward to some feisty disagreements in the