Free Books (really)

Posted on March 13, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

h/t to Stanislav and Milen for the extensive links

FAMOUS AUTHORS

  • Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.
  • The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.
  • Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.
  • Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.
  • Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.
  • Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.
  • Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.
  • Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.
  • The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.
  • Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.
  • Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.
  • Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.
  • Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.
  • Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.

TEXTBOOKS

MATH AND SCIENCE

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  • byGosh: Find free illustrated children’s books and stories here.
  • Munseys: Munseys has nearly 2,000 children’s titles, plus books about religion, biographies and more.
  • International Children’s Digital Library: Find award-winning books and search by categories like age group, make believe books, true books or picture books.
  • Lookybook: Access children’s picture books here.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

PLAYS

  • ReadBookOnline.net: Here you can read plays by Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and others.
  • Plays: Read Pygmalion, Uncle Vanya or The Playboy of the Western World here.
  • The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: MIT has made available all of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and histories.
  • Plays Online: This site catalogs “all the plays [they] know about that are available in full text versions online for free.”
  • ProPlay: This site has children’s plays, comedies, dramas and musicals.

MODERN FICTION, FANTASY AND ROMANCE

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

HISTORY AND CULTURE

  • LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.
  • The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.
  • Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.
  • Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.
  • Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.

RARE BOOKS

  • Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

  • Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.
  • Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.
  • Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.
  • 2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.
  • Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.
  • Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.
  • Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.
  • Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.

MYSTERY

  • MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.
  • TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.
  • Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.

POETRY

  • The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.
  • Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”
  • Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.
  • Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.
  • Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.
  • QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.
  • CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.
  • PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.

MISC

  • Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.
  • World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.
  • DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.
  • A Celebration of Women Writers: The University of Pennsylvania’s page for women writers includes Newbery winners.
  • Free Online Novels: These novels are fully online and range from romance to religious fiction to historical fiction.
  • ManyBooks.net: Download mysteries and other books for your iPhone or eBook reader here.
  • Authorama: Books here are pulled from Google Books and more. You’ll find history books, novels and more.
  • Prize-winning books online: Use this directory to connect to full-text copies of Newbery winners, Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer winners.
Posted in Books, ebooks, Europe, History, Libraries, Theater, USA, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Making Reading a Religious Experience

Posted on March 12, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

A former Russian Orthodox church in Shanghai, China, built in 1932 and long abandoned, has been restored and retro-fitted as a library. Due to requirements placed on the architects by the local Historic Buildings Protection office, no major changes could have been made to the structure. In order to  preserve and highlight the original structure, it was also necessary to remove additions and alterations that had been made after the Communist Revolution.

The design firm decided to recreate a church within the church, using materials that differed from the original, that would leave the walls of the church visible. The silver-plated metal panels were assembled together, simulating the bulk of the apse of the church, so that they could be used as shelving for books.

 

Posted in Architecture, Asia, Books, Libraries | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Finding refuge in books

Posted on March 11, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

ECHO (Education.Community.Hope.Opportunity) is an organisation dedicated to fostering community and education initiatives in Greek refugee camps. The ECHO Refugee Library is their flagship project. They hope to transform the sites in which they work from places of stagnancy and waiting, to places where dreams and drive remain alive.

ECHO began in the context of the closure of Greece’s northern border, leaving over 60,000 refugees stranded in limbo. 17 months into their wait in Greece, many still faced 3-12 more months before being relocated (and for many, reunited with their families) to another European country. Others, without that option open to them, were left to wait for their asylum claims to be accepted and their status recognized. ECHO Refugee Library was a means to help people prepare for that next step, and to make use of otherwise wasted time.

The reality today, though in many ways different from the context in which they began, is still the same: left in ‘asylum limbo’, lives and futures are on hold. The wait is long, anxiety-ridden, and uncomfortable. During this wait, the task of ‘filling time’ must become that of ‘using time’.These are individuals hungry for action, for work, for education – most are former students, skilled workers, and professionals whose lives have been violently uprooted. Echo hopes to provide them with the know-how they need to carry their experience and knowledge into the next stage of their journeys.Their lives are at a standstill; they need not be.
The aim through ECHO Refugee Library is to nurture a space of learning and creativity, a place to cultivate the mind – that one part of us that can never be held captive. It is a place where goals and ambition can be worked towards, regardless of the grim reality of the present.
In the library spaces, they provide the following:
-Books and a quiet reading space
-Access to online learning
-Language learning resources
-Informal small group tutoring upon request
-Advice on university and job application processes
-A space to develop community-led creative workshops

To support Echo financially, please donate through Paypal: paypal.me/refugeelibrary
For questions and comments, please email: contact@echo-greece.org

Posted in Books, Europe, Libraries, Middle East | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

We Are The People

Posted on March 10, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

Iggy Pop’s video “We Are the People” is based on a poem written in 1970 by the late, great Lou Reed. Of the poem, Pop told the BBC last year, “My God, this is the country today as I understand it, or at least one legitimate portrayal of the country today.”  He recently performed “We Are the People” with Reed’s widow Laurie Anderson at Carnegie Hall for the Tibet House Benefit .

 

[Verse 1]
We are the people without land
We are the people without tradition
We are the people who do not know how to die peacefully and at ease
We are the thoughts of sorrows
Endings of tomorrows
We are the wisps of rulers
And the jokers of kings

[Verse 2]
We are the people without right
We are the people who have known only lies and desperation
We are the people without a country, a voice, or a mirror
We are the crystal gaze returned through the density and immensity of a berzerk nation
We are the victims of the untold manifesto of the lack of depth
Of full and heavy emptiness

[Verse 3]
We are the people without sorrow
Who have moved beyond national pride and indifference
To a parody of instinct
We are the people who are desperate
Beyond emotion because it defies thought
We are the people who conceive our destruction and carry it out lawfully
We are the insects of someone else’s thought
A casualty of daytime, nighttime, space, and God
Without race, nationality, or religion
We are the people, and the people, the people

Posted in Music, USA, Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Ugliest Place I’ve Ever Seen

Posted on March 9, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

When designer Amber Share found that there were one-star reviews for all 62 of the U.S. National Parks she decided to illustrate and hand letter travel posters for them “as a way to put a positive, fun spin on such a negative mindset.” Share calls her Subpar Parks series a “snarky love letter to the National Parks System” and it’s side-splitting funny. You can find the series on her Instagram, and buy postcards and prints on her website.

 

Posted in Art, Tourism, USA | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Why Real Books Are Great

Posted on March 8, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

h/t to Strand Books NYC

 

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Clean the World

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

Since 2009 the non-profit organization  Clean the World has been working with hotels to recycle used soap and other toiletry products left behind by their customers into new sanitized soap that is then distributed to people without easy access to soap to prevent disease. The group has distributed 53 million bars of soap and saved 20 million pounds of waste from being discarded. Their hotel partners include Hilton, Hyatt, Best Western, Marriott, and other prominent hotel groups.

Posted in Hotels, Tourism | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Book Face

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

I never seem to tire of the many iterations of the “bookface” project. You probably have  seen versions produced by bored bookshop staff across Europe. Or, perhaps you have stumbles upon  #BookfaceFriday, or simply #Bookface, a meme in which you replace your face (or another part of your body) with a book, creating a clever and literary trompe l’oeil.

German filmmaker Jacco Kliesch took the meme to the next level in this short film, created in collaboration with the staff of the public library in Erlangen, Germany. “For two days,” he writes, “we were carefully lining up faces, objects and body parts—each time trying to create a perfect melding of life and art.”

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Or will we all have to move to Canada ?

Posted on March 5, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

“Banal Story”

by

Ernest Hemingway

So he ate an orange, slowly spitting out the seeds. Outside, the snow was turning to rain. Inside, the electric stove seemed to give no heat and rising from his writing-table, he sat down upon the stove. How good it felt! Here, at last, was life.

He reached for another orange. Far away in Paris, Mascart had knocked Danny Frush cuckoo in the second round. Far off in Mesopotamia, twenty-one feet of snow had fallen. Across the world in distant Australia, the English cricketers were sharpening up their wickets. There was Romance.

Patrons of the arts and letters have discovered The Forum, he read. It is the guide, philosopher, and friend of the thinking minority. Prize short-stories—will their authors write our best-sellers of to-morrow?

You will enjoy these warm, homespun, American tales, bits of real life on the open ranch, in crowded tenement or comfortable home, and all with a healthy undercurrent of humor.

I must read them, he thought.

He read on. Our children’s children—what of them? Who of them? New means must be discovered to find room for us under the sun. Shall this be done by war or can it be done by peaceful methods?

Or will we all have to move to Canada?

Our deepest convictions—will Science upset them? Our civilization—is it inferior to older orders of things?

And meanwhile, in the far-off dripping jungles of Yucatan, sounded the chopping of the axes of the gum-choppers.

Do we want big men—or do we want them cultured? Take Joyce. Take President Coolidge. What star must our college students aim at? There is Jack Britton. There is Dr. Henry Van Dyke. Can we reconcile the two? Take the case of Young Stribling.

And what of our daughters who must make their own Soundings? Nancy Hawthorne is obliged to make her own Soundings in the sea of life. Bravely and sensibly she faces the problems which come to every girl of eighteen.

It was a splendid booklet.

Are you a girl of eighteen? Take the case of Joan of Arc. Take the case of Bernard Shaw. Take the case of Betsy Ross.

Think of these things in 1925—Was there a risqué page in Puritan history? Were there two sides to Pocahontas? Did he have a fourth dimension?

Are modern paintings—and poetry—Art? Yes and No. Take Picasso.

Have tramps codes of conduct? Send your mind adventuring.

There is Romance everywhere. Forum writers talk to the point, are possessed of humor and wit. But they do not try to be smart and are never long-winded.

Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual. He laid down the booklet.

And meanwhile, stretched flat on a bed in a darkened room in his house in Triana, Manuel Garcia Maera lay with a tube in each lung, drowning with the pneumonia. All the papers in Andalucia devoted special supplements to his death, which had been expected for some days. Men and boys bought full-length colored pictures of him to remember him by, and lost the picture they had of him in their memories by looking at the lithographs. Bull-fighters were very relieved he was dead, because he did always in the bull-ring the things they could only do sometimes. They all marched in the rain behind his coffin and there were one hundred and forty-seven bull-fighters followed him out to the cemetery, where they buried him in the tomb next to Joselito. After the funeral every one sat in the cafés out of the rain, and many colored pictures of Maera were sold to men who rolled them up and put them away in their pockets.

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Everything has been done

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

Mads Lynnerup Everything Has Been Done (2019)
‘In this video a book lights on fire, as it gets opened. The book was published by Colpa Press in San Francisco and is in a limited edition of 50 in which 10 out of the 50 books has the potential of lighting on fire, when opening the book. Every book comes in a sealed bag, so there’s no way to tell what books will light on fire or not.

Posted in Art, Books, Film, USA | Tagged , | 3 Comments