What are Reddit's favorite eBook Library Apps?
Project Gutenberg
Library Genesis
calibre
Z-Library
Sci-Hub
Calibre Web
LibreTexts
Moon+ Reader
Ebook3000
Thorium Reader
Amazon Kindle
Apple Books
lingvist.info
OverDrive Media Console
BookFusion
ICE Book Reader Professional
All My Books
Top Reddit reviews mentioning eBook Library Apps:
Calibre, the best ebook manager ever existed.
It's able to auto download metadata from Amazon, Google Books, and some other services; it handles conversion between epub/mobi really well; sending books to e-reader; has its own ebook viewer; multiplatform; etc.
I'm not a fan of the UI, but its not that bad.
FYI, if you want to help bring these old works - specifically books - into the public digital domain, you can volunteer with Project Gutenberg which takes scans of out-of-copyright books as has hordes of volunteers type them up and check them over to turn them into freely available e-books. It's fun, easy, and covered loads of languages and genres.
Edit: I misused the phrase "type up" and it seems to be annoying lots of people. They use OCR on scanned images of the book, then volunteers check that it has not made mistakes, proofread and edit the text for eBook format.
Also if you want to volunteer go here: https://www.pgdp.net/c/
Edit: typo
"True, he had seen pictures in his books of men with great masses of hair upon lip and cheek and chin, but, nevertheless, Tarzan was afraid. Almost daily he whetted his keen knife and scraped and whittled at his young beard to eradicate this degrading emblem of apehood.
And so he learned to shave—rudely and painfully, it is true—but, nevertheless, effectively." - From the original book.
tl;dr: ~~He had picture books with pictures of Alpha Englishmen like himself and they had no beard unlike the hairy savages he grew up with.~~ He was trying to not look like an ape. Source.
EDIT: Misremembered about his picture books. Thanks /u/drazilraW & /u/Jokersmannequin
In a later book, you find out that the Tin man was originally a regular lumberjack named Nick Chopper, who fell in love with a woman who one of the Wicked Witches didn't want him to be with. So she cursed his axe so that when he tried to chop down a tree, he would eventually miss and chop off one of his body parts.
So the first time it happened, and he chopped off a foot or whatever, he went to a tinsmith and had a prosthetic replacement made, and went back to work. Only a little while later to accidentally chop off another piece and have it replaced, until he was entirely made out of tin, and no longer had a heart, and could no longer be in love.
Thing is, the tinsmith kept all of the body parts, so in this book they go visit the tinsmith's shop and the tin man is able to have a conversation with his cranky old head, which has been sitting in a cupboard the whole time.
The tinsmith also kept the body parts of a soldier, Captain Fyter, whose body he had also replaced with tin after he had also fallen in love with the same girl. For some reason he decided to make a composite frankenstein's monster out of their combined body parts named Chop-fyt, who did finally get to marry the girl.
Weird shit.
I've posted this before but it bears repeating:
Shutting down discussion and debate like this is so fucking dangerous.
Mill presents a pretty compelling argument about this in Chapter 2 of <em>On Liberty</em>.
Here's the "SparkNotes" version (linked to the relevant part of the summary). Basically:
>...even if the popular opinion is true, if it is not debated it will become "dead dogma." If truth is simply held as a prejudice, then people will not fully understand it, and will not understand how to refute objections to it. Dissent, even if it is false, keeps alive the truth against which it dissents.
This is why it is vitally important to have these discussions, especially in Universities. We're literally going out of our way to kneecap ourselves and blunt the only weapons we have with which to fight bad ideas and achieve real progress.
That's an old expression, apparently it traces back to 1916 in "Mother Goose".
>He went to catch a dicky bird, >And thought he could not fail, >Because he had a little salt, >To put upon its tail.
It also gave the logo of the Cerebos salt company.
If you don't yet use ebooks, this makes it incredibly easy to get started and organised.
If you do, it can revolutionise how you manage your collection.
Plus it can do all kinds of tricks from lossless image recompression to DRM-liberating.
Have you ever read the story The Yellow Wallpaper? The part about circling the room and wallpaper being torn kinda reminded me of it. In the story there are no actual ghosts but that part is related in a way.
Edit: here's a link, if you're interested https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1952/1952-h/1952-h.htm
> ‘Organic Life beneath the shoreless waves
> Was born and nurs’d in Ocean’s pearly caves; > > First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, > > Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass; > > These, as successive generations bloom, > > New powers acquire and larger limbs assume; > > Whence countless groups of vegetation spring, > > And, breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing.’
If anyone needs a textbook but is not willing to pay. You can go to Z-Library for a free pdf. All you have to do is type the textbook name and then you just download it. This can save you thousands of dollars.
Some parts of the trip had to be done by boat, to cross seas and oceans. About a third of the rest had to be done on foot as there weren't that many roads or the conditions were impractical. The total distance cycled was estimated by him to be around 13500 miles (21700 km).
His story is very interesting, you can get his book about his adventures (in two volumes) for free from Project Gutenberg.
For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick.
by Dr. Jonathan Swift
1729
sci-hub for the win. All you gotta do is Enter the URL and it unlocks most paywalled papers.
Helped me a lot during grad school. These academic publishers are truly a scam. They really have no right to charge exorbitant access fees for articles when they contribute nothing to fund research and pay neither the authors nor the reviewers
My favorite novel, Around the World in 80 Days, taught me about suttee and that the women do it or face the scorn of the relatives. Though it can also be truly voluntary. Your reply reminded me of this!
Relevant text:
"The poor wretch!" exclaimed Passepartout, "to be burned alive!"
"Yes," returned Sir Francis, "burned alive. And, if she were not, you cannot conceive what treatment she would be obliged to submit to from her relatives. They would shave off her hair, feed her on a scanty allowance of rice, treat her with contempt; she would be looked upon as an unclean creature, and would die in some corner, like a scurvy dog. The prospect of so frightful an existence drives these poor creatures to the sacrifice much more than love or religious fanaticism. Sometimes, however, the sacrifice is really voluntary, and it requires the active interference of the Government to prevent it. Several years ago, when I was living at Bombay, a young widow asked permission of the governor to be burned along with her husband's body; but, as you may imagine, he refused. The woman left the town, took refuge with an independent rajah, and there carried out her self-devoted purpose."
The famed socialist Edward Bellamy wrote an enjoyable short read called 'Looking Backward: 2000–1887' that had some enjoyable predictions on how life would be like a century in the future.
I freaking love Project Gutenberg. There's so much bonkers stuff on there it's fascinating.
One of my favorite things is the collection of old children's picturebooks. Here's my absolute fave: "Slovenly Betsy" by Heinrich Hoffman
Fans of "The Office" may remember this guy's name. It's a bunch of cautionary tales for children, warning them against the danger of playing with matches (you die in a fire and make your cats cry) to being overly proud (your neck grows freakishly long).
There's another book that contains the story -- referenced in "The Office" -- of a tailor who will come chop of your fingers if you suck your thumb too much. That book is called "Struwwelpeter: Merry Stories and Funny Pictures"
Its a short story, shouldn't take you more than an hour to read, it is very unsettling.
​
He's referring to "A modest proposal" by Jonathan Swift, a satirical piece proposing to solve the overpopulation of early 18th century Britain by eating the babies. Not Thanos.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16/16-h/16-h.htm
​
Here is the part about Peter Pan killing the kids as they start to age:
" The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out "
Here's the part about eating:
" I suppose it was all especially entrancing to Wendy, because those rampagious boys of hers gave her so much to do. Really there were whole weeks when, except perhaps with a stocking in the evening, she was never above ground. The cooking, I can tell you, kept her nose to the pot, and even if there was nothing in it, even if there was no pot, she had to keep watching that it came aboil just the same. You never exactly knew whether there would be a real meal or just a make-believe, it all depended upon Peter's whim: he could eat, really eat, if it was part of a game, but he could not stodge [cram down the food] just to feel stodgy [stuffed with food], which is what most children like better than anything else; the next best thing being to talk about it. Make-believe was so real to him that during a meal of it you could see him getting rounder. Of course it was trying, but you simply had to follow his lead, and if you could prove to him that you were getting loose for your tree he let you stodge. "
So basically Peter Pan would sometimes feed the children and sometimes it would be a make-believe feast. The children had to prove to Peter Pan they were losing weight before he would give them food.
Here is a link to the original story:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16/16-h/16-h.htm
The line in question:
"The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out "
It doesn't specifically say Peter Pan kills them, but how else are we supposed to read "thins them out" in this context?
For another read that could be enlightening to you --
About 200 years later, an anonymous upper-class Victorian man wrote a long book that similarly catalogues his life and shows how upper-class English men used less powerful English women as sexual objects, sometimes non-consensually. Unlike Pepys this work is specifically about his sexual life. There are many, many examples of the author regularly groping, harassing, and/or raping women he encounters, often servants of his family, lower-class women around him, and sex workers. Some of the girls he assaults are very, very young.
The book is anonymous and author has been much speculated about, but this article in the journal Victorian Literature and Culture makes a fairly convincing case that it was a civil engineer named William Haywood.
Great list!
Also you can check out the works of Sir Richard Francis Burton on Project Gutenberg.
He was a very interesting guy - an adventurer who was also an amazing linguist, translating several well known foreign texts (Kama Sutra and Arabian Nights being the most prominent).
Edit: I should also mention that he is one of the main characters (fictionally) in the Riverworld sci-fi series by Philip José Farmer and was most probably the template for the character Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser. Both series are definitely worth a look.
I think it's actually quite a shame how we've turned Lincoln into a deity-like figure (the Greek Temple style memorial is a big offender here, as is Mount Rushmore). The think that makes Lincoln so awesome when you read about him how relatable and humble he was. He loved to read dumb humor stories and to go to the theater every night--he would have loved TV. He had a down-home joke or story for every occasion--you can read a book of them collected while he was still in living memory here--grain of salt as to the details, of course, but it gives you an idea.
Unlike so many other leaders, he had experienced a lot of failure in his life, so he wasn't so tied up in ego. He didn't care if a general or cabinet member was disrespectful--he cared if he could use him. When Salmon P. Chase, his Treasury Secretary, was going behind Lincoln's back to campaign to replace him, Lincoln just pointed out that as long as Chase was motivated to work for the presidency, he was going to do his best at his job.
I suggest you guys go to https://z-lib.org/, they have a vast library of free books there that you can download. That's where I get books on Astral Projection and other spiritual/occult literature.
I dunno if it's just my Uni or something, and it ain't a small one, but I haven't paid for a single book in my whole degree of CS. Each course is obliged by faculty to list one mandatory book, but the first thing the teacher says when we review the course plan on the first day: Don't bother with the book, our course notes are better or we'll provide you with a digital copy if it's ours.
We had quite a few teachers sending a mass e-mail to class with something along the lines of "We do not condone the usage of https://libgen.is/ to download your course materials. That is all."
Even the head of the whole science faculty, which gave us our Network Engineering course, said don't bother with the book because he added to his notes all the useful bits.
It looks like the killing is implied in Chapter 5 of the book. -
"The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out; but at this time there were six of them, counting the twins as two."
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16/16-h/16-h.htm#link2HCH0005
Actually, yes: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3528/3528-h/3528-h.htm#link2H_4_0008
In the On His Own Works section he gets pretty technical.
And he's able to discuss it at length because music is a subject that Beethoven was passionate and exceedingly knowledgeable about. Is there an example from Trump that demonstrates mastery of a subject?
That's terrifying.
My recommendation: Get a local library pass if you don't have one already and start reading. Books on everything, but especially history (world history in particular), politics, sociology, philosophy, natural sciences. Mix in some classic fiction, from old Greek plays to the most important authors of the last couple of centuries. Access to many classics is also legally possible via online libraries such as Project Gutenberg and www.archive.org.
You're really at a disadvantage here and this homeschooling program could seriously impact your academic future, it probably already has. Time to take matters into your own hands.
Edit: This was probably a stupid recommendation, since you recognized the error yourself and appear to already have an interest in history. It could also be considered to be patronizing/condescending. I apologize.
The right to self defense is so important that it is actually the first natural right Locke derives from the fundamental rights of life, liberty and property in his Second Treatise of Government (see sect 7). Basically, he states that rights are pointless if a person cannot prevent another from infringing those rights.
You don't have to read very far into Locke's Second Treatise of Government to realize that his theory of natural rights is the foundation of our system of government. Anyone arguing the 2nd amendment needs to be repealed is basically saying they want to fundamentally change our system of government. Granted, most of them probably just short sighted and think it's a "common sense" safety measure, but that just illustrates how poorly they understand what has made our system of government work as well as it has for 200+ years.
Confirmed in the original text. Plus the movie puts you on notice that the Oz universe distinguishes between "good witches" and "bad witches."
Dickens novels. They have long sentences with complex language (to practice pacing and articulation), many characters with dialogue (so you can try talking in different voices), and entertaining stories to boot. They're also available for free on gutenberg. I'd start with A Tale of Two Cities, followed by David Copperfield (unless you want to go straight to the most difficult, which is probably Bleak House).
>Do you think they would have ground the beans? Or just steeped them in boiling water after they were roasted?
Depends. It's possible to roast the beans and boil them for a long time and extract a good amount of the soluble material. You end up with what Ukers calls a liquor. This would have been fairly common in Colonial America. More common was grinding and then boiling. After that you would let the grounds settle and pour the water through a cloth to filter it a bit. Less common was pouring water over them just after a boil. That requires multiple utensils, whereas you can just throw a pot of water and grounds in a fire and let that boil together.
> What happens if one attempts coffee from green coffee beans?
Some of the earliest peoples to partake of coffee ate the berries raw, or toasted them lightly. Making a drink from green coffee beans wouldn't taste very good.
Source: Same as OP. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28500/28500-h/28500-h.htm#Chapter_XXXIV Uker, Chapters 34-36.
I’ve always been struck by the account in Sherman’s Memoirs, where he shows a telegram announcing the assassination to the Confederate General Johnston when negotiating the surrender of Johnston’s army in North Carolina:
“As soon as we were alone together I showed him the dispatch announcing Mr. Lincoln's assassination, and watched him closely. The perspiration came out in large drops on his forehead, and he did not attempt to conceal his distress. He denounced the act as a disgrace to the age, and hoped I did not charge it to the Confederate Government... We talked about the effect of this act on the country at large and on the armies, and he realized that it made my situation extremely delicate. I explained to him that I had not yet revealed the news to my own personal staff or to the army, and that I dreaded the effect when made known in Raleigh. Mr. Lincoln was peculiarly endeared to the soldiers, and I feared that some foolish woman or man in Raleigh might say something or do something that would madden our men, and that a fate worse than that of Columbia would befall the place.”
Columbia, had, of course, burned down two months prior after Sherman’s troops drove out the Confederates.
Source: Sherman’s Memoirs, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4361/old/orig4361-h/p4.htm
Shout-out for z-lib / 1lib. You can find most academic books there to pirate as PDFs. Fuck paying $150 for the 13th edition version 4 of some basic chemistry book just because your university professor gets paid to require it and nothing else.
H.G. Wells' "Little Wars" was a rulebook for one of the first tabletop wargames ever made, and its preface tells of the hilarious development of it. Project Gutenberg has the whole thing online, if you want to read it.
If you plan to walk around barefoot in your dorm and it has hard floors, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD swiffer the floors before you move your stuff in. Even if maintenance staff clean it, chances are your floor is still going to be disgusting.
Also, Project Gutenberg and archive.org are goldmines for acquiring non-textbooks. I got all six supplementary books I needed for my classical law class through these two sites. Saved me about $75.
It gets better!
Any prose and poetry over a hundred years old is also free! No piracy or legal shadieness, they're all available to the public legally! It's because they don't use American copyright laws! And it's all there in project Gutenberg waiting to be explored. Fuck, you can even put them on your Kindle for free?
Wanna read Frankenstein? Pride and prejudice? Antigone? Marcus Aurelius' Meditations? Fucking go for it! Hell, I think there's even some Agatha Christie in there too!
This is known as copyfraud. He may have copyright in the particular typeset appearance, but not the texts.
These editions don't have any unique merit that would make them worth having. There are perfectly good, well-formatted editions of public-domain classics on Gutenberg and other sites. Gutenberg often has EPUB and Kindle versions with the original images.
You dropped a comma (Project Gutenberg does, too). Cary's translation is
> All hope abandon, ye who enter here.
See the plate. I gave the original Tuscan so people don't think Dante wrote like Yoda because Cary did!
(Edit: gutenberg.org doesn't like inline links from other sites, so I changed it to something that seems to work.)
Wow that is so cool!!!
Project Guttenberg also has TONS of free, REALLY OLD stuff. I've had quite a good time reading some of the old 'manuals' for how to be a good wife & mother. LOL.
I haven't had a chance to read "Endurance" yet, but "South!" - written by Shackleton is amazing.
The whole thing is such an epic adventure, it's amazing they survived. Setting sail in the James Caird into the unforgiving Southern Ocean and navigating by the stars, then having to traverse a mountain range no one had ever explored before to reach a whaling outpost.
I think one of my favorite parts of that story is they left right as WWI was starting and they first thing they asked when reaching the whaling station:
>“Tell me, when was the war over?” I asked.
>“The war is not over,” he answered. “Millions are being killed. Europe is mad. The world is mad.”
Many of the crew would then go back to fight and die in the trenches.
Here is the full text of Washington Irving's Knickerbocker's History of New York. It is a fascinating read for anyone who is into history, myths and origin stories.
The colors of the Knicks/Mets (orange, white and blue) come from the flag of New York, which has quite a bit of Dutch symbolism (a sailor, a native warrior, a windmill, barrels, beavers, etc.); those are the same colors that flew over New Amsterdam when it was settled in 1625.
If anyone is in the New York area, I highly recommend a visit to Washington Irving's estate Sunnyside and/or to nearby Sleepy Hollow. There is a ton of fantastic old history in the Hudson Valley and it's worth checking out.
Unless you want open competitions so that only men can play as there are few sports where females can match any male in any manner, then you already accept that people can be banned from competition based on biological differences. Or if you accept that those that don't fit into something like weight divisions can be excluded from competition, you accept that people can be banned based on biological differences.
By extension its been tested by the US Air Force that there is still a noticeable biologically sourced difference between transgender athletes and their cis competitors after several years of transitioning procedures. Moderate the above study by the limited sample size however - although most any study on transgender athletes are going to have limited sample sizes by the nature of the condition.
The reason for these divisions is to keep people safe. Males are stronger than females, there's no way to make up for that outside of singular genetic aberrations. I've trained in MMA for well over a decade, when I was starting out rather young one of the Instructors I had was a woman. Absolutely fantastic fighter. Could have went pro easily if she didn't have other aspirations. By my mid teens I was able to beat her just by using my body size, and I'm not a massive guy. Nowadays its not even a competition.
Its unfair. But that is reality. Sports are predicated on safe competition between individuals or teams. Not on making people feel accepted or happy.
> All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the “elect” have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so “slow,” so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle—keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.
From Roughing It, chapter XVI, by Mark Twain.
Did you know that the destruction of Building 7 registered a 0.6 on the Richter scale? It's true!
Check out Where Did the Towers Go? by Dr. Judy Wood for free, in full to learn many facts about the WTC disaster not ever touched by the MSM or the controlled 'Truth' movement!
If you could bold the part about any laptop being sufficient (like people in some majors can just use a chromebook and be fine) that would be nice. Also, adding a link to libgen ( https://libgen.is/ ) would be helpful in the textbook section, it's a pretty decent resource for finding PDFs of textbooks. Overall, thanks for doing/unearthing this, I'll be sure to link people asking questions!
Yo OP, check out The Z library it’ll save you a fortune on books for your kiddo. I use it for college stuff but there’s a ton of kids books on their too. And tell your little reader she’s doing great
I'm a librarian and yes, ebook policies are annoying.
But the reason they're in place is because libraries do not own the ebooks like the print collection. They only have a license.
For print materials, the laws of First Sale apply. This means that the material is legally the library's property so we can circulate it, alter it, or re-sell it at a fundraiser. Whatever we want.
An ebook is held under a license from the publisher, meaning there is no First Sale and the digital material remains the publisher's property. So while you technically could make a single ebook available to everyone indefinitely - like on Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/) - but because publishers don't want that, their license agreements enforce things like limited availability that leads to long waiting lists and the file nuking itself from your device after an arbitrary lending period.
The digital licensing issue is even bigger in academic libraries, where journals are almost all online these days. It makes for easier access for research but again the library does not own the material. If a publisher changes their licensing conditions or just folds, whole back catalogs can be wiped out.
So, to sum all this up, capitalism is why we can't have nice things.
> they would not treat the Scots or Anglo-Saxons any different from how they would treat a Dane.
Do you mean the Vikings who were not Danish here, or Danish vikings? As the 12th century Gesta Danorum definitely indicated that Danish laws discriminated against non-Danes, e.g.:
> "Further, he appointed that if an alien killed a Dane, his death should be redressed by the slaying of two foreigners." (Book 5)
For managing ebooks look at Calibre which can convert formats and remove some DRM to allow you more choice of stores and devices.
With Kindle's you can simply use Calibre to load books directly onto the device or have Calibre email them to the device. The Paperwhite and I believe Voyage models of Kindle have back lighting to allow reading in low light and its completely configurable to allow you to increase or decrease the light level as required. Need to water proof it? I just drop mine in a zip lock bag and reading at the pool or beach is safe.
There are kindle apps for most tablets and operating systems, but reading on a tablet compared to an ereader like kindle or kobo does suck.
This is overly cynical and misanthropic. Truth and justice happens because of free speech, not in spite of it. If we accept your bleak assessment as truth then the Gutenberg press was a net negative and we should return to the happy days of 1300 AD.
Since I remember the days before the Internet and easy access to old books, IMHO, the website Gutenberg Project alone will forever make the Internet a net positive for society:
Yes, you will lose weight on Kellogg's diet. Yes, this is CICO. Yes, you will lose weight if you walk 10-20 miles per day. Yes, eating nothing but a single bland food day in and day out may drive you into eating less because you're sick of it.
However, this is fatlogic that we still see today and it's one of the most common and dangerous ideas that prevent people from losing weight. Fad diets. Having to go to the gym. Having to eat specific foods. Not having money to eat "healthy food". All of that stems from this core type of fatlogickal belief. People try this stuff and usually fail because it's not sustainable, then conclude that weight loss is impossible.
Many of us here on /r/fatlogic are living proof that you can lose significant amount of weight eating whatever you want and sitting on the couch all day so long as you just eat less than you burn.
Kellogg was a whack job in many other ways, which you can read about in his Wikipedia entry. If you want to read more of his advice check out The Living Temple and Plain Facts for Old and Young, both out of copyright and available for free online. Prepare yourself for even more extreme recommendations to kill people's sex drives (corn flakes, burning the clitoris with acid), how masturbating affects your skeleton and causes children to be easily frightened, and how enemas can cure headaches.
Best advice I have heard is that hunger is like a wave.
By that I mean that most people believe hunger is like an avalanche, an unstoppable force that will increase until the person can no longer stand against the overwhelming magnitude that is an avalanche.
But rather hunger is more like a wave in the ocean, frequent and constant, but nothing compared to an avalanche. If you can stay strong for the 30m-1h that the hunger wave hits you, you can withstand anything.
"I can think. I can wait. I can fast."
You have two threads in your argument here, some based on books, the others based on side services that libraries provide, which don't need to be linked.
This really depends on the book in question. There are 150,000 publications available through project Gutenberg and their partners. Libraries have increasingly limited paper book collections, as people move away from using them. There are interlibrary loans, but they are a hassle and take time. Plus smaller towns have even more limitations with dead-tree editions - the internet is better for rural users.
Have you see the "People who bought this also bought..." when you shop on Amazon? In addition, the indexing you can do online is far more useful than happening upon a book on the library shelf.
Yes, access to computers and internet is a good thing. But there's no reason it has to be in a library.
Is this something that the government should pay for? Do we need a whole building for it?
Yes, many ebooks work with libraries - online from the comfort of home. Why do you need a brick and mortar building if you're downloading ebooks?
Um, you're posting on reddit to say that you need libraries to get exposed to new ideas? There are many many places on the internet (such as reddit) that are far more likely to have diverse views rather than going to a lecture at your library attended by people who live in your town.
Again, this is great, but it doesn't require libraries to accomplish.
PRO TIP TO SAVE $$$: Never buy textbooks before classes start.
- Most "required" textbooks aren't required.
- If they're absolutely necessary, check libgen.is to see if you can download it online. Once you find your textbook, click on any of the 'Mirrors' links on the right.
He wrote The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, but my favorite of his is a short story called Young Goodman Brown.
The full text is here and it's a quick read. I think you'll like it.
Just Ctrl-F-ing through the text I think he does say monster quite a few times:
>I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created.
>I then reflected, and the thought made me shiver, that the creature whom I had left in my apartment might still be there, alive and walking about. I dreaded to behold this monster, but I feared still more that Henry should see him.
>I lived in daily fear lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness.
> “Abhorred monster! Fiend that thou art! The tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil! ..."
> I must perform my engagement and let the monster depart with his mate before I allowed myself to enjoy the delight of a union from which I expected peace.
And so on. Other characters refer to Frankenstein's creation as a monster as well.
Here's Project Gutenberg's electronic copy of On Liberty by John Stuart Mill: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34901
You can download it in various formats for free from Project Gutenberg!
And, here's a Wikipedia-entry about Mill's On Liberty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty
See for yourself. This is from Chapter 5:
> All wanted blood except the boys, who liked it as a rule, but to-night were out to greet their captain. The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out; but at this time there were six of them, counting the twins as two. Let us pretend to lie here among the sugar-cane and watch them as they steal by in single file, each with his hand on his dagger.
Here's the full article for free for anyone that wants to see it: https://sci-hub.do/https://doi.org/10.1212/01.wnl.0000219761.05466.43
Fuck paywalls that block science. Let the progression of knowledge be free for all.
Some shows on Netflix are available for download now! I don't know how much space you have one your phone/laptop/tablet, or how big the file size is (I assume pretty big) but maybe this is an option? Also, Project Gutenberg has free e-books for download.
Good luck, you are a warrior! You got this!
I'm not sure about the answer to your question. I'm in the U.S. and most overdrive ebooks for me have two downland options - Amazon or epub. But, there is something you can do if you have a personal computer.
First, download Calibre. (https://calibre-ebook.com/). It's free, open-source software to manage an ebook library. You'll see it discussed often in this sub.
Second, download and install the DRM removal plugin into Calibre. (https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/).
Once it's installed, books you import into Calibre will automatically have the DRM removed. Downloading an epub from the library will require Adobe Digital Editions, which is free and the file you get from the library should prompt you to get it. Once ADE actually downloads the real epub file, you need to locate that file on your computer and add it to Calibre.
Removing the DRM allows you to convert the book to other formats, which Calibre does well. Convert it to .mobi and add it to your Kindle, which you can do by emailing it or through a connected cable.
Here is the preceding line:
“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”
> I also like having the entire works of Shakespeare in an easily carried format, where I can read it in bed or on a plane without hurting my elbow, for about 2 bucks or so.
Dude if you're paying for Shakespeare, you shouldn't be. Any well-known book that's in the public domain is probably free on project gutenberg.
You can check out Project Gutenberg. I've only ever downloaded the e-books as pdfs but there is supposedly a way to upload them to Kindles and other e-readers.
Edit: I just realized this is the website I have used, I'm not sure if the two websites are related.
I've gone between Kindles and Kobos over the years since they've been released. I've never had to change a device because it wore out, and the old devices have always made great gifts/hand-me-downs. DRM is looser on a Kobo than a Kindle, but if you need to convert any books to any format calibre is the recommended app.
If you have any other questions, just let me know and I can try to answer them!
“A prince must always seem to be very moral, even if he is not.” - Niccolo Machiavelli
I’d imagine Machiavelli would be none too surprised to see men consolidating their power - that’s what massive accumulation of wealth truly is - at the expense of others. Then sharing enough to look good, but not so much that it threatens to destabilize the system that allows them to have such wealth.
He talks about people being whimsical in their allegiances based on what benefits them the most (referring to the masses), and it seems to me that if those in power believe that, it behooves them to take as much as they can as often as they can in preparation for the (inevitable?) changing of the tides, potentially against their favor.
He wrote in a time when many philosophers had idealized versions of leaders (think philosopher-king archetype of Plato), so the idea that those in power may not have the interests of the masses as their primary motivation was radical thinking at the time. I wonder why the Catholic Church banned The Prince?
Man, I need to re-read that ASAP.
I've posted this before but it bears repeating:
Shutting down discussion and debate like this is so fucking dangerous.
Mill presents a pretty compelling argument about this in Chapter 2 of <em>On Liberty</em>.
Here's the "SparkNotes" version (linked to the relevant part of the summary). Basically:
>...even if the popular opinion is true, if it is not debated it will become "dead dogma." If truth is simply held as a prejudice, then people will not fully understand it, and will not understand how to refute objections to it. Dissent, even if it is false, keeps alive the truth against which it dissents.
This is why it is vitally important to have these discussions, especially in Universities.
I also don’t recommend z-library (https://z-lib.org) It too lacks millions of textbooks and other literature available for free. This is literally what I tell my students at the beginning of my courses each semester.
If anyone wants to read it, it's on Gutenburg.
It's actually a hilarious satire about works like The Odyssey and The Illiad. The title pretty much translates to "True Story Bro" and Lucian's whole point was "you realize we can all make up mythology, right? No one's stopping you!"
> Isn't the type of liberalism we see with things like Social Justice and Political Correctness considered Illiberal?
I'm neutral on GG but I'm a Mill liberal who has studied liberal political philosophy, perhaps I can give you some insight.
Moderate / Classical Liberalism, like Mill Liberalism as an example, advocates for minimizing social and legal control over people. The main principle at play is harm - if one harms you, their liberty can be limited, as they have not respected your liberty.
Linked to this is liberty generally - if somebody seeks to limit your liberty, you are within rights to limit theirs to the extent that they can no longer unjustly limit yours.
Moderate liberals do not think offense is a valid argument, nor do we think one should limit discourse due to the potential to offend.
This is because offense is a given in most heated debates, but also because by the metric of offense free speech could not occur at all.
Political correctness is generally hated by moderate liberals, as it prevents debate. Political correctness is essentially a form of social tyranny, so we are naturally opposed to it.
As for the SJW offense line, by definition it is not a core liberal principle, and is actually in direct conflict with liberalism.
This is because they have taken moderate progressiveness [giving everybody autonomy] to an extreme [we must protect minorities] without recognizing that their actions limit liberty.
This is also because they seek to increase both social and legal authority, rather than decrease it. Which is a very dangerous game to play.
If you want to learn more about the principles in play, and what actual liberals think about what principles are important, I would recommend you read this.
I don't recommend it just because I'm a Mill Liberal, but mainly because it's short compared to other works and written plainly compared to other philosophers.
Yeah, and when you combine a Kindle with Project Gutenberg and Calibre, you end up with a large backlog of free public domain books that will consume your every waking hour.
> Anything the author/content creator isn't being compensated for.
This is incorrect. Rather, it is anything the author/content creator (or their estate) has not (or may not, due to contractual obligations) authorized within the scope of their rights under copyright law.
Otherwise, this link to Project Gutenberg would be against the rules. Or this link to a Cory Doctorow novel.
As written, the rule does not consider public domain, creative commons, fair use, or author goodwill, among a myriad of other reasonable example of an author or publisher giving away something for free. Not to mention that authors aren't compensated, beyond the initial sale, for library loans and second-hand book sales. All these things would be considered "piracy" by the above definition.
I'm not an expert, but I recommend The Man Who Was Thursday if you like fiction, and Heretics if you like non-fiction.
Also, a lot of great works are in the public domain and you could use an e-reader or tablet. Here's a great resource for that:
And a good suggestion from me, here's the entire work of HG Wells:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/30
If you're into anything sci-fi, you'll love this stuff.
>12. Don't shop at the bookstore for your school books! Amazon is your friend on this one!
Honestly, don't even fiddle with Amazon if you can help it. Search for your textbook here first, free is always better. Usually if I can't find a book there, I'll do a super deep search on the internet for a pdf of it, and if that doesn't work, then I'll go to Amazon.
Dear,
First make really sure that they hate you as you think they do. The age you're in usually makes us think that way.
If above is affirmative, then your case should be something like this:
/ It'll take some time.
/ Get anything kind of job, Good or bad, hard or boring, doesn't matter. Make sure you're feeding yourself. Read this book, please - Click Here to read the book
/ Never hesitate to raise your voice against abuse. You're not disrespecting anyone or anything. It's basic defense mechanism. What a culture it it can't protect ya. Not every elder is worth the kindness.
/ Build a strong body. It makes shit ton of difference. My own father and uncle used to get into physical fight when I was skinny and a kid but then as I became little strong the control was mine.
/ Study hard. As I can see you have internet access and can read and write English, study something online like basic app development.
/ NEVER. ABUSE. THE ALCOHOLIC. It only makes things worse.
/ Put a fake smile on your face when inside the house.
/ Find a library and read books. They will be your friends 'till you find a real one.
IT'LL HELP.
Best of luck.
The full quote is quite a lot different and is in relation to arming the people who you need to control the State and populace: > There never was a new prince who has disarmed his subjects; rather when he has found them disarmed he has always armed them, because, by arming them, those arms become yours, those men who were distrusted become faithful, and those who were faithful are kept so, and your subjects become your adherents. And whereas all subjects cannot be armed, yet when those whom you do arm are benefited, the others can be handled more freely, and this difference in their treatment, which they quite understand, makes the former your dependents, and the latter, considering it to be necessary that those who have the most danger and service should have the most reward, excuse you. But when you disarm them, you at once offend them by showing that you distrust them, either for cowardice or for want of loyalty, and either of these opinions breeds hatred against you. And because you cannot remain unarmed, it follows that you turn to mercenaries, which are of the character already shown; even if they should be good they would not be sufficient to defend you against powerful enemies and distrusted subjects. Therefore, as I have said, a new prince in a new principality has always distributed arms. Histories are full of examples. But when a prince acquires a new state, which he adds as a province to his old one, then it is necessary to disarm the men of that state, except those who have been his adherents in acquiring it; and these again, with time and opportunity, should be rendered soft and effeminate; and matters should be managed in such a way that all the armed men in the state shall be your own soldiers who in your old state were living near you.
>What is huger or more formidable in appearance than the elephant? Yet it is man's plaything, and a spectacle at public shows, and learns to dance and kneel.
Plutrarch's <em>Morals</em> ~100 AD
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26129/26129-h/26129-h.htm
Chapter XI, "Hus Arrives at Constance."
"With this holy father there came to the Council twenty-nine cardinals, seven patriarchs, over three hundred bishops and archbishops, four thousand priests, two hundred and fifty university professors, besides Greeks and Turks, Armenians and Russians, Africans and Ethiopians, in all from sixty to a hundred thousand strangers, and thirty thousand horses."
-John Hus A brief story of the life of a martyr by Rev. Dr. William Dallmann
https://media.ctsfw.edu/Person/Details/694
(This book isn't listed on the link of works by the author, but the book was published by Concordia Publishing House so I believe it reasonable to assume that the author and the person linked are one and the same, especially noting that his specialty seemed to have been the roots of Protestantism.)
So, we know that Africans and Ethiopians (somewhat different in the eyes of the church, as Ethiopia was a Big Deal in the medieval period, being believed to be the nation of the descendants of Solomon) were present in Konstanz in 1414 for Jan Hus's trial. I'll keep digging to see what else is out there.
Anyone intrigued by this thread might want to read Mark Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. It describes a man transported to medieval England who gradually rebuilds important parts of modern technology. It deals with 19th-century technology and medieval times, but the general concept is similar.
EDIT: The book is available for free on Project Gutenberg.
You're not limited to Amazon books only - there are great resources like Project Gutenberg etc. that specialise in out of copyright books.
Also some publishers do free ebooks as well - usually in EPUB format, but calibre can convert then to AZW/MOBI
https://www.baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/2012
Calibre is a great app for handling and converting third party books.
>I assert that man loves and desires nothing but his own happiness. He therefore loves his life only inasmuch as he esteems it the instrument or subject of his happiness. Hence it is happiness that he always loves, and not life; although he very often attributes to the one the affection he has for the other.
— Giacomo Leopardi, Essays and Dialogues
You seem to be concerned about the way that some people speak, and the degree that they adhere to a certain standard of grammar. In my quest to change or alter your view, I'd like to present an argument rooted in history and linguistics.
First, it seems that you are conflating black vernacular with hip-hop culture. Here is the text of Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit (one of my favorites), a story recorded by Joel Chandler Harris. He published these slave folktales in 1881, stories that were told from the narrator Uncle Remus (a person modeled after real black slave storytellers). You can see that the grammar structure and method of speaking depicted is different from other standards of grammar at the time, but is a predecessor to the types of expressions you describe.
Now, I'd like to pull apart your connection between this type of grammar and the hip-hop genre of music. A different method of speaking existed among American Americans since at least 1881, and was present at the beginnings of hip-hop. As is natural, people create music in the grammar and way that they are most used to speak in. As with many parts of black culture this way of speaking has proliferated even to those, like myself, who don't consider themselves culturally close to black culture.
It seems to me that you are concerned about this grammar, and the way that it doesn't match up with your older, different standard of English speaking. As the evidence you cited shows, English grammar is in a state of transition - some are holding to a more traditional standard, and some are openly using the new. I can only leave you with the words of the Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan:
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
Reminds me of Mark Twain in "Christian Science", where the narrator had been seriously injured and a Christian Science woman came to "treat him". Edit: link https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3187/3187-h/3187-h.htm
Just at that point the Stuben-madchen trod on the cat’s tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of cat-profanity. I asked, with caution:
“Is a cat’s opinion about pain valuable?”
“A cat has no opinion; opinions proceed from mind only; the lower animals, being eternally perishable, have not been granted mind; without mind, opinion is impossible.”
“She merely imagined she felt a pain—the cat?”
“She cannot imagine a pain, for imagining is an effect of mind; without mind, there is no imagination. A cat has no imagination.”
“Then she had a real pain?”
“I have already told you there is no such thing as real pain.”
“It is strange and interesting. I do wonder what was the matter with the cat. Because, there being no such thing as a real pain, and she not being able to imagine an imaginary one, it would seem that God in His pity has compensated the cat with some kind of a mysterious emotion usable when her tail is trodden on which, for the moment, joins cat and Christian in one common brotherhood of—”
She broke in with an irritated—
“Peace! The cat feels nothing, the Christian feels nothing. Your empty and foolish imaginings are profanation and blasphemy, and can do you an injury. It is wiser and better and holier to recognize and confess that there is no such thing as disease or pain or death.”
Calibre is basically the standard at the moment. I personally find it very frustrating and a perfect example of giving the user too much control. There are so many tweaks that it is nearly impossible to set up the same way twice. And some settings are super buried. I count at least three settings panes that are completely separate.
I am all for power-users, etc but there is a line where it is just too much!
What's worse is that the developer is quite opinionated on how things should work. The best example in my mind is that the default is to store your last read position in the epub. While I see the benefit, it means that any syncing program now has to sync the entire file every time it is viewed. That is problematic for things like cookbooks which are (a) big and (b) usually read non-sequentially. You can, of course, change it but that settings is buried in the settings for the reader.
With that said, I use the app since it has features I just haven't found elsewhere. And it is super powerful!
Calibre-web is also really nice and polished but lacks a feature I really want! When you open an epub in the web-viewer, it downloads the entire epub into your browser. Again, this is miserable for large books like a cookbook. See #1647. (epubs are zip-based but there are ample server-side tools that can read into the file).
You don't have to buy them from Amazon, there are many sources for free, public domain books, or regular downloading. You only need Calibre to upload the books from your pc to your kindle.
I bought my Paperwhite (which is the most popular version of the Kindle) in 2014 and it's holding up pretty well, I still use it daily with no battery problems or lack of updates
I put all my ebooks on my kindle manually without any amazon involvement. You want a program called calibre. It can convert pdf, mobi and epubs. Keep in mind, converted PDFs don't always scale correctly. I've put a lot of ebooks I've bought off humble bundle on my kindle, but you can put books found elsewhere on it.
If you bought the ad-supported version, there is also an easy way to get rid of those.
> And either way, democracy is about doing what the majority want regardless. That's how you build a stable society.
If you haven’t read it, do yourself a favor and go read the “Enchiridion” by Epictetus. It’s only 40 pages or so, and available for free. It’s a fairly challenging read, but absolutely worth it. The freshest water comes from drinking directly from the source.
Yes. It's pretty short, you'll probably be able to clear it in an hour if you don't constantly stop to think about the paragraph you've just read - I'd recommend reading it through all at once, and then re-reading one portion at a time and taking the time to meditate on each concept.
By the way, you don't have to buy it. The book is in the free domain (copyright has expired) so if you prefer an electronic format, you can access it for free at Project Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14209
Or if you prefer PDF format, here's a pretty well-formatted PDF:
http://www.yogebooks.com/english/atkinson/1908kybalion.pdf
The book itself is pretty short, but there's a whole ton of books on the Hermetic philosophy out there. This is just considered the central one.
Also, check out /r/Hermetics/ while you're exploring the Hermetic philosophy ;)
Shutting down discussion and debate like this is so fucking dangerous.
Mill presents a pretty compelling argument about this in Chapter 2 of <em>On Liberty</em>.
Here's the "SparkNotes" version (linked to the relevant part of the summary). Basically:
>...even if the popular opinion is true, if it is not debated it will become "dead dogma." If truth is simply held as a prejudice, then people will not fully understand it, and will not understand how to refute objections to it. Dissent, even if it is false, keeps alive the truth against which it dissents.
This is why it is vitally important to have these discussions, especially in Universities.
Thankfully eBooks are tiny. Like really tiny. For the amount of data consumed by one hour on Netflix you could download 9,000 eBooks, and while that's back of the napkin math it's not much of an exaggeration at all. Hell, just browsing through Netflix titles consumes more data than several eBooks combined.
eBooks (excluding comics) are the single most data-efficient form of digital entertainment, whether measured in efficiency of compression or measured in hours of entertainment per byte. The entirety of <em>The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes</em> likely consumes less data than just pulling up this comment thread.
So if you're worried about data caps the solution is actually to read more eBooks in deference to streaming video.
Download your ebooks to your computer and use a DRM removal tool to remove Amazon's digital rights management locks. Then use Calibre to manage them. I keep mine in my Dropbox folder so they are automatically backed up to all of my devices.
Amazon is a company. Companies go out of business or change formats. Amazon even removed paid-for books without permission from people's Kindles a few years ago. Barnes and Noble is about to fail and their terrible ebook policy is a large part of it. Don't let your books vanish because Amazon changed formats or decided to shut down their Kindle line or whatever. (Seems unlikely now, but who knows? I have books that were published in 1905 that I can still read. If Amazon makes one switch to their AZW format, now suddenly my ebooks are as useful as a Beta video player.)
Plus, Calibre gives you a lot of reflected value to your Kindle. It helps you organize and rate your books, categorize your reading... All kinds of stuff.
The download data only listed the author's birth and death, not publication date. Gutenberg doesn't seem to have publication date for all eg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17221
However yes, going from date of death of authors I'd say most are from 19th to early 20th century. The oldest was Dante, newest Samuel Vaknin, born in 1961.
$150 gets you a tablet, which you presumably can't share with your mates or borrow.
To actually read you gotta pay for the books. And a good chunk of them are public domain, which means there are 100% free versions of them on the internet, which those tablets presumably don't have access to. If you're a free man you can go read Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass here, if you're in a PA prison that'll be $150 for the tablet and $12 for the file.
Absolutely, and they are free on Project Gutenberg, them and the rest of the Edgar Rice Burroughs stuff on there are great reading. There's tons of other sci-fi on there too:
https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Science_Fiction_%28Bookshelf%29
Project Gutenberg is not a Google product. They're a registered charity, and a bunch of volunteers working hard on a tiny budget and are very worthy of our support.