I am due to travel, and I want to take some books to read, but I hate travelling with the weight of two or three book, so my up to now I have loaded up my Kindle with books to read.
That is until I found Gutenberg, or to be more correct, Project Gutenburg. One of the best places for books, and get this its all free, ok you have to be into old out of copyright books, but that still opens op a ealth of books to download as Epub, or pdf if your so inclined.
But I prefer Epub, I can rqad them on any Mac, iPad, iPhone they all sync and the reading experience is great. Plus I can mark up any word or section, and add a note to retrieve later.
So whats to find, well for me it books on Architecture, and there are loads all interesting, some I have found on Carpentry some on Barn design, the drawings are great, and very detailed.
Does this stop me from reading modern books, hell no, I am very into Foundation by Isaac Asimov, and have Station Eleven by Emily St John lined up.
Plus a few books from Wired magazine that interest me. Gothic Architecture fascinates me, I love the style, the detailing and materials, so finding a book on the subject for free was a real surprise.
Does this mean I will not take my Kindle, no, its coming with me, but the question is will I use it, absolutely I will, I have been using Kindle since it came out, so have a large collection, that unfortunately I have not found a way to transfer, so although I don’t plan to add to the Kindle List, I shall not leave it.
I have been pulling together a few books of my own, and plan to release them later this year, ePub seems to be the easiest way, especially as I use Apple Pages to write and the export to ePub is so easy, so part of my reading is to go over some of my own books and crit them,
I get a lot of offers for books, and I must admit, a £0.99 book in ePub or Kindle is an ofer I can’t resist, I think, why not, lets give it a go, I often do not last long, leaving it after a few chapters but once in a while a book grabs me The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods, is one.
But lets finish where I started at Gutenburg. If like me you have only just thought about Dickens, then do a search, and see what comes up, well as you might expect all the classics are there, except one and that you search for Boz, to find Sketches by Boz, to read some early work by Dickens, and this is the first on my list.
Don Quixote is next, I have tried several times to finish this book, but it needs quiet and time, together, hopefully, with a glass of red wine.
So explore this free resource, I have only just touched the surface. The site offers specialist list, to explore, and with a catalogue of well over 70,000 books, there is plenty to browse through.
If like me you walk a dog, then take a look at the Audio books, the list seems to be growing, with not just english but many different languages including, I was suprised to find, Latin. For me these play on Apple Music, but thats ok. although this new find has to compete with my podcasts.