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➔ ManyBooks.net website
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90 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
To clarify, this is fully legal and above board; all books published in or before 1924 are freely available as e-books because they are in the public domain.
I recommend downloading books from Manybooks, which has over 50,000 free books.
Charles Stross has written several (don't start with Singularity Sky, it depends on books before it).
Accelerando is a pretty good stand alone book by Stross.
Free ebook of it is here:
http://manybooks.net/titles/strosscother05accelerando-txt.html
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, one of the all-time greats.
There is also an excellent short story by E.M. Forster called The Machine Stops which you can read for free as it's in the public domain. Don't lat the age of the story put you off, it's a great story.
>Does everything for the kindle require you to buy via amazon?
No. You can use other mobi formatted books. There are plenty of sources of eBooks both free and paid. Check out:
>Can you put a pdf on a kindle? are there limits?
Yes and Yes. Not all embedded fonts work perfectly on the Kindle. Graphics have some very limited capability for zooming. Also things that are formatted for a 8.5x11 paper size don't work very well on a non-DX Kindle. Heck I think anything not formatted for that tiny screen doesn't look that nice from a pdf perspective. I mostly use a different device (iPad) for PDFs now and use the Kindle for plain text books which it really excels at.
>3G for kindle, is it a subscription? or only for browsing books to buy?
I don't know of any limitation for the 3G, it is free and works for everything I've tried with it.
>Is there any way of viewing news sources?
Yes. There is a built in web browser and you can go to any news site you like. There is even a mobile reddit site which works.
>Is it worth buying the newest one? or would I be just as good buying an older model?
The newer ones are faster (think page turns) which I like. I have a second and third gen device. The only benefit for the first gen device was it had a removable SD card but it was buried in the battery compartment. They work as USB storage devices when you plug them into a computer so you really don't need the extra removable storage.
You want challenging? Peter Watts: Blindsight.
Watts is a well-established author, but this particular book is actually available as a free download. You can get it from the site to which I linked.
Watts is also an exceptionally smart guy. I had the chance to talk with him about the central argument in the book a couple years ago, and it was very damned interesting.
I won't give away too much except to say: you'll be wanting to have a really good dictionary handy, and you'll want to study up on neurology, intelligence, consciousness, and similar ideas.
Guarantee you won't breeze through this one: there's a lot of dense, chewy thinking in it, which is integral to a genuinely mind-blowing storyline.
Edited to add: Warning -- this is true 'hard sf'. Most of the books I see cited in this thread are space opera. They assume we can break a number of laws of physics for the purposes of telling their stories. Watts does nothing of the sort.
Butler's translation of the Odyssey: 129,443 words. More like 27 Odysseys... If you used a pretty big page size (bigger than 8x11) you might be able to fit it on around 4000 pages, I think.
Try downloading Accelerando by Charles Stross (don't worry it's released under the Creative Commons license).
It's a story of humanity reaching the Singularity and basically making ourselves obsolete.
99% of people who vilify socialism or Marxism have never read it. I keep this link handy for people who don't understand socialism other than what the media tells them: http://manybooks.net/titles/marxengelsetext93manif12.html
Apocalyptic fiction has produced some truly weird tales. there's a book from the called Greener then you think, where the world is destroyed by out of control Bermuda Grass.
For those who haven't read HP Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness", it's about such an expedition, written while the antarctic was still a largely unexplored land of mystery. I'm in the middle of it right now.
> We would have [pulls random number out of cracking of arse] unemployment in [seriously this is utterly pointless guesswork here] months
> incredibly harsh measures
What incredibly harsh measures would those be? Taxing the wealthy to provide for the less fortunate and providing additional healthcare and housing? Oh what a heartless demon!
> incredibly left wing
No. This is what a left wing manifesto looks like:
http://manybooks.net/titles/marxengelsetext93manif12.html
Where are the calls to abolish private ownership and end the rule of the bourgeoisie? You don't have a clue what you're talking about, my friend.
This is a little off-topic, but if you want free classics than I highly recommend manybooks.net - they have a crazy ton of stuff in a wide array of formats. They also have a decent foreign language collection if that's an issue for you, although it heavily favors the major western European languages (Spanish, French, Italian, German).
The conquest of bread - Peter Kroporkin
You can download it in here in any filetype. It's from an anarcho-communist, it's very simple to read and very good.
I'm no expert, just the last few years I've been reading pirate histories.
The Pirates' Who's Who: Giving Particulars of the Lives and Deaths of the Pirates and Buccaneers, Philip Gosse, a fairly good read, encyclopedia of all notable pirates, does not describe any parrot as pet or sidekick, on board ship or on land.
If you want to read something that's really inspiring without the Coelho cheese-factor, check out Voyage to Arcturus. (link to free epub)
I was recommended to read this by none other than C.S. Lewis - so how could it not be amazing?
Also, do read Lewis's 'Space Trilogy' - even the skeptic/cynic/secular will be riveted and inspired. I find the paperbacks really cheap at Half Price Books under Sci-Fi and give away a set when I've found all 3. The titles in order are Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength.
The paperclip maximizer example is terrifying when coupled with the reality of high frequency traders being dead set on making an AGI to maximize profits.
The result could very well something along the lines of what <em>Accelerando</em> by Charles Stross discussed.
>Capitalism eats everything when the logic of competition pushes it so far that merely human entities can no longer compete; we're a fat, slow-moving, tasty resource – like the dodo.
It's available for free here if you're interested.
The good news is that there's plenty of both authors to keep you busy for a while.
http://manybooks.net/authors/doyleart.html
http://manybooks.net/authors/burroughse.html
You might try some Jules Verne too. And the the three musketeer stuff by Dumas.
This site has a "readers also enjoyed" section on it:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/188572.The_Complete_Sherlock_Holmes?from_search=true
Here's some more, including those linked in the article:
Here's some general Swedish literature in ebook-form (mostly older works where the copyright has expired):
That's great :), it's a long way but you can do it, you just did the hardest part, admit your privileges (I'm privileged too) and realize the cause of what oppressed you. >Depressing but true. If it was easy it would have already happened...
Just don't think this means it's forever, capitalism is only 300 years old, there were empires that lived more than a 1000, capitalism will die (or the human race will), we can make a way, there's no definite way, there's only the one created locally to suffice the local needs and make sure nobody is controlled, that's direct democracy and what is defined through that, with the mind of everybody making the best for everybody, changing, evolving, to solve whatever society needs to solve.
Anyway, one book that I really like is The Conquest of Bred, from Peter Kropotkin, he is an anarchist and talks about anarcho-communism, but in that book he mostly talks about how society doesn't need capitalism, that's an extremely important step, he proved in the 1892 that capitalism wasn't necessary, imagine today. You don't need to agree with everything you read, but that's great, because it makes you understand what you believe more because you question it. You are starting now, there's a shit ton to read (I started some time ago and I still have a shit ton of books waiting and will have forever).
You can download it here in any file type you want.
A first step: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqHSbMR_udo
The meat of the matter: http://manybooks.net/titles/laotzuetext95taote10.html
Seriously, I've had to deal with over 6 years of facing the possibility of death every 4 months, due to a serious health condition and an insurance company that's dead set on denying me care. This is what gave me the strength to adapt to and overcome hopelessness.
Sounds like you've done a bit of reading but just in case you haven't read it Robert E Howard wrote an essay explaining the history of the world that he used as a reference guide when writing to keep the world consistent. It's a great start to learning about the lore.
http://manybooks.net/pages/howardrother07hyborian_age/0.html
First, understand the lexicography of Deism. http://www.deism.com/deism_defined.htm
Second, a common issue with the validity of Deism is definitions on morality and how humans can understand what god wanted if the god doesn't participate in our lives. I enjoy this debate, read the comments too. http://moderndeist.org/is-morality-written-into-the-code-of-creation
Third, Thomas Paine is considered the "father" figure of modern deism, especially concerning rational thought. This book is a good read. http://manybooks.net/titles/painethoetext03twtp410.html
The first 2 sites are good places for discussions and "food for thought" topics. I recommend you go back and peruse them after you visited all 3 links.
You can find free ebooks here: http://feedbooks.com/publicdomain http://manybooks.net/
If you don't mind paying, this publisher sells entire works of authors in convenient bundles: http://www.delphiclassics.com/
I think you might want E.E. 'Doc" Smith. Especially his Lensman series. It's worth a try. Also, they're free:
http://manybooks.net/authors/smithee.html
It's about as retro as it gets, in the type of stories you described, and is still enjoyable to read.
I've tried a bunch of domain names dealing with "seraph" and while googling, I came across this:
> So spake the Seraph Abdiel, faithful found
This is from Milton's Paradise Lost
I've downloaded the text from here.
Perhaps this text could be used for a dictionary table as well? There are a lot of refences to Seraphs (Seraphim) in his verses, and based on the Treasure Island Cayde-6 owns, perhaps this is also something Bungie grabbed inspiration from?
Just thinking out loud...
EDIT:
It is also Milton's Areopagitica that uses Osiris as a metaphor for "Truth".
I've ran this random book through the thing, and this is the output. Text is gzipped before encoding.
It doesn't use alpha. I've encountered problems when reading back alpha values, guess it has something to do with the format. I should look into it more.
It can properly store line breaks and other white spaces, guess one could use HTML for better formatting capabilities, because HTML is just text.
Lots of good recommendations here. Also:
Ken MacLeod's Engines of Light series that begins with Cosmonaut Keep
H. Beam Piper's Terro-Human Future History series also should be mentioned along with his short stories, the Fuzzy series and novellas like Four Day Planet and Lone Star Planet. Much of his work can be found for free at Project Gutenburg or at Many Books. H. Beam Piper is one of the largely unknown, but massively influential and tragic science fiction authors.
I can only assume you've already read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island? If by some chance you haven't, go read it right now - here, it's in the public domain, so you can get it legally and for free. It's the quintessential pirate yarn.
The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster. That link is to the free e-book. Fantastic book, not to be missed.
Fight Club by Palahnuik
1984 by George Orwell.
Down & Out in Paris & London is about Orwell's time living in abject poverty in both cities. It's worth the read for both the subject matter & the style of storytelling. A lot of what he experienced would still apply to impoverished people today. It's an amazing story.
Did you enjoy Steinbeck & Hemingway? Because both of them have loads of other novels that are fantastic.
Steinbeck for example:
- Of Mice & Men is an excellent starter. If you read that & enjoyed it you would want to pick up
- Grapes of Wrath (or vice versa, if you enjoyed Grapes, pick up Mice). For something that is more a comedy,
- Cannery Row is laugh out loud, ridiculously funny (& if you like it then
- Sweet Thursday is Cannery Row part two).
- The Pearl is a parable, really different to Steinbeck's other work.
Hemingway isn't my field, but Goodreads would be able to put you on to more well liked books by him.
Here's a link to a free download of The Machine Stops, by E. M. Forster. It's a classic dystopian sci-fi. More of a novella, it's pretty short, and it's an amazing work of that genre. It was published in 1909 & shows incredible insight into how the world would change over the next 100 years. Forster is one of the best writers of that time as well.
The Martian by Andy Weir is super popular at the moment & the film is coming out in November so you might like to read that before you see it at the cinema.
I find it somewhat interesting that some people didn't understand that particular allusion right away. That said, I'm reminded of this XKCD cartoon, so I'm not going to criticise. But there is some benefit to having some passing knowledge of Bible stories to understand much of western art history and the literary canon (particularly Shakespeare) as well as popular culture.
The trouble is I'm not sure if there's a cheat sheet to crib those allusions - particularly for those who just want the reference rather than religious indoctrination. A book like this looks like the way to go.
I can recommend a really good book for Greek and Roman myths (public domain e-book) along similar lines, though
I started reading Spanish with this (free) collection: http://manybooks.net/titles/harrisone2206522065-8.html
It's old and uses some words that I have never heard spoken, but it's an awesome way to get a feel for sentence structure and verb tense. It very gradually gets more complicated, at what I feel is a pretty ideal pace for a beginner.
I made a mobi file with some 20 brothers grimm tales to accompany some audio recordings I had found. I don't know where I found them originally, but I can rip them from my kindle and ipod, if you'd like.
I think a book club going over a lot of the classic socialist writing might be an easy way to educate folks and get them up to speed on the basic ideology.
I highly recommend The Iron Heel by Jack London. It's a quick read and is a bit more endearing than some of the more clinical texts. If you've got participants that have ereaders, here's a link to a free copy:
Thanks for sharing, more resources for things like this are always good as far as I'm concerned. Another website I'd recommend would be Manybooks.net, it and Project Gutenberg have been main resources for public domain works.
Here ya go: http://manybooks.net/categories/NAU
These are all free...I suggest "Sailing around the world alone" by Joshua Slocum "2 years before the mast" by Richard Dana, "Cruise of the Snark" by Jack London. There's a ton more. If you check the /r/sailing FAQ on the sidebar, there's a ton of suggestions in there.
Good luck!
Well, anything can give you eye strain, depending on the condition of your eye muscles, but the Paperwhite (and the Voyage) have adjustable backlighting. I set mine a little dimmer when I'm reading in bed with no other light source, and it works quite well. It can also make a difference which font you choose to use.
Free ebooks: Depends on what sort of books you want. For classics -- anything published before 1926, really -- Gutenberg offers virtually everything they carry as a Kindle-readable file. I also get a ton of more modern stuff through Kindle Unlimited -- and they're not all junk, either.
Well, if you're interested in learning about her but don't want to risk paying money to read her, some of her writings can be found for free. Her most famous book is only short. It's called "A Short and Easy Method of Prayer". Since it's experiential what she says can be proven by any Christian: I'm certainly a witness to this, and can testify that all she promised came true.
And, although by this point my posting link after link may be getting redundant, I'll offer you just one more, in case you might be interested: her autobiography.
The fullness of her teachings, the wisdom, all perfectly grounded in Scripture and presented in a way that few but her could pull off all means that I can't recommend Guyon's literature enough.
It's a book you can find online; it's well beyond its copyright date. It'll be free, and probably pdf. It was written by an author you may recognize: P.T. Barnum. That's what initially caught my eye. In it, he outlines a surprisingly simple way to always make money, and taking it to heart helped me a lot.
You've got to get $10K in 5 months? The trick is that you need to save $2K/month after living expenses. $2K/month is definitely achievable, with a reasonable income.
If that $10K is a (student?) loan, don't worry about paying it all off at once. Instead, commit to paying on a regular basis. Paying off a loan is usually equivalent to saving money, and even in debt adults still afford vacations and living expenses by budgetting around loan payments. I managed $600/month I didn't need on minimum wage. That excess would easily cover student loan payments if I had any. Keep the payments consistent, and bigger than the minimum payment and you'll be fine (you'll get screwed by interest if you pay minimum). Moving out, you'll want maybe $4K and a job (enough to cover deposit, first month's rent, and any purchases you need for the home).
If the $10K is an expense, not a loan, then you need to have $2K/month that you don't spend. With your rent, you'll probably need an income of $37K to pull it off. Do think about whether you actually need to spend $10K, or at least whether it all needs to be paid at once.
Okaaay. Two I had in mind are C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy and David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus.
I can't find The Space Trilogy online so I've taken to picking up copies I come across at my Half Price Books and creating whole sets to give away to friends. I don't have a lot of reader friends so I always wait until I think someone would really appreciate them- they are the chosen few.
So could you print off something like this which is 35 pages & post it to him? Or would that be too much?
Does he have access to a music device? I'm wondering whether there would be a restriction to audiobooks if you put them on CD.
On m'a offert une liseuse il y a 3 ans et c'est horrible. Ma bibliothèque Calibre compte - à ce jour - 5321 ouvrages, ma bibliothèque papier autour de 450-500 et je ne sais plus ou donner des yeux. J'ai besoin de plusieurs vies pour lire tout ça et ça me désespère.
De bonne sources:
www.ebooksgratuits.com : des classiques ou des ouvrages moins connus du domaine public
http://manybooks.net/ : un tas de trucs
http://www.munseys.com: du bon pulp des familles
http://roman-gratuit.com: depuis la fermeture de la Team Alexandriz, je vais là-dessus, il arrive de tomber sur des trucs intéressants.
Et puis Gutenberg également, qu'on ne présente plus.
Ah j'ai mentionné Calibre, c'est un bon logiciel pour gérer tes ebooks.
Keep going on that list (it looks like a good one). Only thing I'd add is The Machine Stops by E M Forster. That's a link to the free download. It's a short, classic dystopian sci fi & a great book.
Check out /r/52book.
Here's a link to an awesome free dystopian sci fi The Machine Stops by E M Forster. Forster's a great writer &amp;amp; this is some classic sci fi.
The Collector by John Fowles is a pretty creepy thriller. It's about a young guy who stalks a young woman who lives in his neighbourhood &amp;amp; one day he wins a stack of money &amp;amp; he abducts her.
You might also like Margaret Atwood's latest offering Stone Mattress which is a collection of short stories, some are connected, several are very creepy.
(Added links)
Dystopian sci-fi & in the public domain (free) is The Machine Stops by E M Forster. It's brilliant. Not even a sci fi fan here, it's just a great "classic."
C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, which led me to A Voyage to Arcturus (free ebook here).
Edit: Both are great examples of Bildungsroman, my favorite types of novels.
Thomas Paine was a great American patriot and revolutionary. He was so ahead of his time. His book The Age of Reason is beautiful and a great read 200 years later. I love his review of Isaiah. It made me laugh after all the silly time I spent trying to make sense of that nonsense. Thomas Paine lived and wrote more than 200 years ago. I like to think what would happen if instead of reading the Book of Mormon over and over and over again, if people and families with young children would read from The Age of Reason every night together. I don't think Thomas Paine accepted his mormon temple work from the St. George Temple just like the the rest of the American Founding Fathers, who would have drinken some more of Samuel Adams Beer and then pissed hard on their new mormon temple work cards, if they had been allowed to rise out of their graves for vengance. http://manybooks.net/titles/painethoetext03twtp410.html
Also not really the same, but have you read any of Charles Stross's futury stuff? Like the latter two stories in accelerando orthe spiritual successor glasshouse.
I go in with less expectations. It actually makes reading the book more interesting. I've read on my kindle so I get a lot self published Indie titles, Q ,The beasts of new york The Deviations series. The fact that I had very little expectations going in made me appreciate them more.
It's important to remember that a lot of the people who make these seemingly fatuous 999-calls are extremely vulnerable and commonly have mental illnesses of varying degrees. This is something which, if I remember correctly, the writer of Blood, Sweat and Tea talks about at length.
If you haven't already, you really should read The Time Machine by H G Wells and The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman. Edit: Spelling.
You should check out The Iron Heel. I'm reading it right now and it does a really good job of explaining why we're made to endure this insane lifestyle.
At the Mountains of Madness http://manybooks.net/titles/lovecrafthother06At_the_Mountains_of_Madness.html The Dunwich Horror http://manybooks.net/titles/lovecrafthother06dunwitch.html
edit: simpler to link to all of the available titles http://manybooks.net/authors/lovecrafth.html
ManyBooks, Amazon, wherever. Old books that are in the public domain (i.e. ones published before 1923) are free to distribute and download. Project Gutenberg converts these texts into ebooks and offers them for everyone.
Certainly I like Stross' blogs where he comes across as decent and humorous. The infodumps in some of his stuff that I read tend to go over my head.
His popular and famous Accelerando is available in public domain, you may want to go for that. There are also some short stories he has made available for free.
what are the wait times like from minor to major incidents/illnesses and surgeries?
ps i dont want to take away from OP but if anyone is interested in reading more experiences of being a medic in the UK theres 2 books by tom reynolds called "blood, sweat and tea" and 2nd book "more blood, more sweat and another cup of tea."
can buy or download for ebook here:
http://manybooks.net/titles/reynoldstother06BloodSweatAndTeaCC.html
http://manybooks.net/titles/reynoldstother09more_blood_more_sweat_another_cup_of_tea.html
I've been interested in time travel and the technological singularity recently, the two books I'd recommend are Accelerando by Stross which is apparently free here (this is a pretty epic story of a generation of one family, space travel, time dilation, and technology) and the other is The Accidental Time Machine by Haldeman this is one of my personal favorites and a real page turner, especially in the last 1/2 of the book you keep thinking how in the hell can this possibly end but good god what comes next!?
Cyberpunk, post-cyberpunk, or infopunk, whatever you want to call it, I really liked Geek Mafia by Rick Dakan. You can even find it for free at http://manybooks.net/titles/dakanrother07Geek_Mafia.html . I haven't read the two sequels yet, but I REALLY loved Geek Mafia.
Great stuff.
I highly recommend Joshua Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World: http://manybooks.net/titles/slocumjoetext04slgln10.html
I also recommend Two Years Before the Mast: http://manybooks.net/titles/danarichetext032ybrm10b.html
EDIT: Holy crap, this is a nice find. Some of these are even audiobooks! Thanks for sharing.
> Edit: by "lock-in" I mean I'd prefer to pick the reader that supports more formats and that doesn't work better for books purchased from one vendor than another.
The nook wins in this regard.
I run linux (Ubuntu) and have had no problems with my nook. I have used ePub and pdf with no problems, but I think it actually supports all the major types. I don't think that the kindle can handle anything more than their own proprietary format, but most things can be converted using Calibre.
My local library can't loan books to a Kindle. If that is important to you, you should look into what your library supports. To be fair, I cannot get books from my library from home, but that is because Adobe didn't make the software for linux and has nothing to do with my nook. I can get it from my VM Windows box though.
> There seem to be a lot of posts that say they enjoy their Nook or enjoy their Kindle, but that's not really what I'm asking about.
I'm ignoring that and am going to tell you that I love my nook.
Before I get complaints, according to wikipedia, the Kindle supports more formats, but most of them aren't widely used. It's lack of support for ePub means that even though they support more formats, they will be able to read less books than the nook. According to another wikipedia page the format gap is less than the previous link claims. I know this isn't official, but it was the only stat I could find quickly -- a list of formats and their popularity. If that is true, then you'd not be able to use the second most popular format on a kindle without converting it to a kindle or pdf format.
Warbreaker and Elantris are both standalone books by Brandon Sanderson, same person who wrote Mistborn. I would recommend you read Warbreaker, it's really a fantastic read and a great introduction to Sanderson's works.
Edit: Even better, if you don't mind ebooks, you can get Warbreaker for free!
I've only recently been studying Narcissism, so I can't really go into much depth quickly as my thoughts are not that well fledged out.
But this book, Malignant Self Love, will take you through it in depth and help you see yourself, it's less than 200 pages.
Apparently I've dealt with it my whole life, just wasn't aware. Having a strong moral code to follow and really trying to be logical to myself has been massively influential in not turning me into a walking nightmare.
The single biggest tool of use is Dialectical Behavior Therapy. It will let you better control your thoughts and impulses to be to your benefit, as well as help you explore why you think what you do and react how you react.
Expect plenty of pain. Heh.
And, there are plenty of women that want a man like you too, so, don't feel like you're screwed from romance and pussy. Women are all crazy, and crazier men are more fun and exciting.
Here's a link to the only manifesto you need to read:
http://manybooks.net/titles/marxengelsetext93manif12.html
And best of all you won't have to buy it as the bourgeoisie would like, it's completely free!
Ha ha :D
I'll probably get tarred and feathered if I say I don't read science fiction (oh, check out /r/printSF by the way, that's the specialist sub for it - but don't stop posting here in /r/books. Post in both :)
I did read a science fiction once - The Machine Stops by E M Forster. The link is to the free ebook. I love Forster's other books so when I saw he had a short sci-fi I had to read it. But otherwise I stick to literary fiction (sorry - don't hate me!).
A short dystopian, earth based sci-fi is The Machine Stops by E M Forster. It's free (legally) at the link provided. I really enjoyed it.
If you're into ebooks The Machine Stops by E M Forster is a really good dystopian sci-fi. It's free at the site I linked. Unfortunately it's very short but it's excellent. The setting is people live underground with everything controlled by a machine. They never have to interact in person with anyone their entire lives. One man isn't satisfied and wants to know what else there is.
Yep, you should pick out a couple by Shakespeare - but they're best viewed rather than read IMO - you could do both. Alternatively, his sonnets are really good in audio. Hardy is good but I'm a big fan of E M Forster. Passage to India is beautiful, but you could always pick up his more obscure The Machine Stops. The link is to a free version & it's sci-fi (very short). If you're interested in LGBT fiction then Maurice is definitely worthwhile. I'm a big fan of all Forster's work.
I enjoyed Little Fuzzy and its sequel, also Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. Two of my favourite short stories are Omnilingual, in which archaeologists on Mars find a way to read the Martian language, and He Walked Around the Horses in which a real historical figure finds himself in an alternate universe, and Piper invents a different history for the world with different career trajectories for known historical individuals.
He had a few interesting ideas like the para-time alternate worlds, and was entertaining although not outstanding.
A lot of his work is available free on-line.
Cool :)
I'd recommend The Machine Stops by E M Forster for sci-fi. Thats a list to a legit freebie. And there my sci-fi knowledge ends.
So you want some non fiction too? I really liked Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo for non fiction. I think she won a Pulitzer for her journalism (not specifically this book).
I recommend The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster - that's a link to the free ebook online. It's sci-fi and is really good.
Make sure you visit /r/FreeEbooks if you haven't already - they have a list of resources as well as new free books listed every day.
Many consider My Own Kind Of Freedom - by Steven Brust to be the best of them. At least it is written by a professional Sci-fi author.
The Story of the Invention of Steel Pens, With a Description of the Manufacturing Processes by Which They Are Produced, a nice free ebook originally published in 1890.
A brief synopsis, I don't remember the names, but one enterprising gentleman's silversmithing business was declining, entrepreneurially he was working on replicating the quill pen in a more robust form, made a sale, which ballooned quickly. Of course, others started copying him, offering the unheard of "a gross of pens" for 1p, or some such low price.
The ebook is a good read as it is approximately contemporaneous, and documents a seemingly insignificant yet class-busting industrial advancement: cheap pens for everyone. Goose quills and the artisan level skill to turn them into a short lived pen made them expensive and not an item for the lower, illiterate class.
The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster is a fantastic example of classic dystopian sci-fi. That link goes to the free ebook. It's more of a novella, it's pretty short & shows a phenomenal level of insight shown for a book written in 1909. I never see it mentioned around, I read it recently & was blown away. Forster is better known for his period novels & somehow this one goes under the radar.
Definitely one for your list.
The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo first person account of Hernan Cortes' travels and conquer of Moctezuma.
Geronimo's Story of His Life Surprisingly Geronimo doesn't make himself look a complete hero, including stories of his hatred of Mexicans and numerous bloody attacks.
/u/truethomas suggested Frederick Marryat, free ebooks of all of Marryat. But review carefully, some of his works are flowery British writing that, for me, gets very tedious, example is Mr. Midshipman Easy.
All are free ebooks, the site is a better for browsing than Gutenberg. Also you make reference to your native language, Manybooks also has many non-English free ebooks.
...On the plus side, you will have instant access to thousands of free books as well - sites like manybooks.net have a huge selection of public-domain books. The formatting is pretty basic, but it's clean and it's legal and it's free. So especially if you like the classics, they pay for themselves pretty quickly.
That being said, I personally much prefer dead-tree editions, and am a loyal patron of my local library. It helps, of course, that our library system is amazing and that it takes me all of 3 minutes to walk there from my house. There's also some recent research that indicates that reading text in digital formats (afaik that includes e-readers) lessens reading comprehension - here's a link to one of my comments where I cite a few sources (I could probably just re-type them, but meh).
Worms today, ex-KGB Spiny Lobsters tomorrow. Someone call Manfred Macx!
(FWIW Accelerando should be on any techno-geek's reading list. And because information is free - a major theme of the book - so is the book in pdf from the author)
http://manybooks.net/titles/strosscother05accelerando-txt.html
I never go to any bookstores (and I believe we only have perhaps only two in this entire city...). Instead I supply myself with books from alternative sources, many which derive from the internet, or set out to the thrift stores to pick up many an obscure book.
These are a few of the places that I visit:
Goodwill
While I am on my university's campus, I may also visit the library after a class and pick out some books pertaining to my major. I study in the field of crime, a field which has rather been defined only recently. There are quite a bit of old treatises on crime from the olden days, even a bit of philosophical conjecture on how criminals come about and how they should be treated, but only the recent works of Criminology hold a candle to the truth.
I visit the websites that I scour for ebooks almost on a daily basis. I have a bit of an addiction to downloads, you see, and nary a night can I go without succumbing to downloading at least a few promising books before bed. As for the thrift stores, I let my father handle that. He traipses over there weekly for his own purposes and often times comes back with either a detective fiction, a true crime, or a criminal justice textbook for me.
You don't need an e-reader to get all of Shakespeare's works or any public domain books for free, and any internet connection and a public domain archive like Project Gutenberg or Many Books would do.
It all didn't start with Hitler - German was on a destructive path way before Hitler stylized radical politics into a para-military movement:
http://manybooks.net/titles/bergsonh1711117111-8.html
Henri Bergson - The Meaning of War, written in 1915
Write: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style
Speak: 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People
2) Free Ebook - Carnegie's Art of Public Speaking - http://manybooks.net/titles/carnegieda16311631716317-8.html
This will get you started. the rest is up to you, and involves practice, time, and the ability to shut out naysayers. Constructive criticism is good, plain criticism is useless. I would also recommend a book called 'The 48 Laws of Power'.
edited for more stuff
Out of the ones on the side, I've used these successfully and without hassle.
Note: I try to stay away from free ebooks available from the University of Adelaide's website if I can help it. In my experience, a few of their ebooks aren't complete or don't work properly on the ePub format. However, this is probably only for a small number of their books, and could be my system/ereader's fault.
Nice Ellison flash back for me. Can't think of anything off the top of my head along those lines, but if you haven't started Game of thrones yet its really worth reading it. Way more depth than the TV series.
Edit: seeing the Gaiman reference reminded me of a book that was fairly strange, The American Book of the Dead by Henry Baum.
There are lots of places you can get it for free. For example, this site has it in a variety of formats and seems to well-rated: http://manybooks.net/titles/bunyanjoetext94plgrm11.html
If you enjoy reading out of copyright books (a good percentage of what I read at least), then Calibre is your friend if you have any kind of eBook reader. Check it out!
They are all (sadly) very very out of print. Free and (I think) legal ebook versions are available of Empire of Glass (1), Sands of Time(5), Human Nature(7) (later adapted for 10), Lungbarrow(7) (the finale), A Well Mannered War(4).
Some of them are here: http://manybooks.net/titles/laneaother05empireofglass.html
I read this just recently and found it interesting
I also read charles Stross' Accelerando just yesterday and found it very well written, and a great book on the lead up/during/ and post singularity. it attacks the subject from every angle. all the while having many themes and stories.
"Buddy Holly Is Alive And Well On Ganymede" by Bradley Denton. It has been out of print for years, but it's one of my all time favorite books. And the author graciously allows it to be downloaded for free:
http://manybooks.net/titles/dentonbother09buddy_holly_is_alive_and_well.html
This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I started a shelf on manybooks of books I find particularly meaningful or entertaining. I would add Cory Doctorow's Little Brother to this list, if it would let me.
I would except I don't have a kindle. If he pulled a Charles Stross and actually put stuff up online for free I'd be more than happy to give him a chance. i.e.:
http://manybooks.net/titles/strosscother05accelerando-txt.html
Wouldn't surprise me one bit. If you like those, make sure you read Accelerando by Charles Stross, if you haven't already. Sounds like it may be up your alley. :-)
I wanted to get this to read, but was suprised to find it it wasnt free.
I did some searching and found it: 1. http://manybooks.net/titles/poeedgarother07Narrative_of_A_Gordon_Pym.html 2. (Vernes finished the story in a followup): http://manybooks.net/titles/vernejulother07antarctic_mystery.html
They don't have anything by the other two that I could find, but here's some by Plato.
In general, I find manybooks to be a really good site, so I'd check there for other authors too.