In a post late in December, I mentioned that I was downloading some classic books.
What I didn't mention is why: I had been given a Kindle Paperwhite.
Let me confess this: I was skeptical of ebook readers. I have a fair number of books, moving from time to time tends to keep down the size of my library. And I do love the feel of a book.
But now let me sing the praises of ebooks. First off, I was stuck in an airport for six hours. If I had been carrying a regular book, I'd have finished it and then be faced with having to buy one of the crappy selection at a second-rate airport's bookstore But with the Kindle, I had downloaded a few library books before I set out on the trip. No worries about running out of material to read. Lots of free Kindle books appear here on a daily basis.
And the classics! There are free classics, some on Amazon and a lot on Project Gutenberg. I'm reading "The House of the Dead, or Prison Life in Siberia" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I fully intend to tackle "Les Miserables". Herotodus's histories are in my Kindle. I probably couldn't lift a backpack containing the paper copies of what is now on that thing.
I just might have to shoot my television.
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3 comments:
Ditto. Reading Red Badge of Courage on mine now. It is conveniently easy.
I started reading the post and was going to recommend Herodotus until I saw I was too late. Homer's a little dry, but I'm giving The Iliad some time, here and there. (Talk about too many characters! Geesh.)
There's some good WWI memoirs on Project Gutenberg, too. Eddie Rickenbacker, Billy Bishop and others. A good one by a motorcycle "despatch" rider is even more educational than the writer intended.
Sometimes the formatting on the old books is so screwed up... but they can still be read.
I've held off on getting a Kindle, Kobo or anything like that because these machines don't handle PDF files very well, and that's a lot of what I would be reading on the road (reports, manuals that kind of thing). I'll probably get a used tablet like an iPad and use that.
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