My co-blogger and hetero life-mate Martin is being very virtuous this new year and has vowed to update his booklog – which has grown into quite a substantial body of book reviews – more regularly in this coming year. He will too, he’s annoyingly efficient like that.
(I just went and checked, he’s done it already. Blimey. Never underestimate a Dutchman with the metaphorical bit between his teeth.)
I, on the other hand, am a lazy sod and so my online literary activities this year will be mostly confined to the occasional pointing of juicy goodies on the free online library of 20,000 electronic books that is Project Gutenburg. Its mission statement:
- To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks.
- This mission is, as much as possible, to encourage all those who are interested in making eBooks and helping to give them away.
- In fact, Project Gutenberg approves about 99% of all requests from those who would like to make our eBooks and give them away, within their various local copyright limitiations.
- Project Gutenberg is powered by ideas, ideals, and by idealism.
- Project Gutenberg is not powered by financial or political power.
- Therefore Project Gutenberg is powered totally by volunteers.
Gutenburg deserves a much higher profile than it currently has: although 20 million or so books are downloaded every week it’s still not yet up there in the public consciousness with Wikipedia, Google, YouTube or MySpace.
I’ve been having some eyesight problems lately (hence the constant irritating tyops) and reading can be very diffuclt in dim and articial light at the moment, so Gutenburg is set to be my new best friend, at least until the spring comes and I can sit outside and read again.
Here’s the Top Ten on their download list at the moment:
- Kamasutra by Vatsyayana (247)
- The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing by Joseph Triemens (211)
- The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci ? Complete by Leonardo da Vinci (192)
- Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases by Grenville Kleiser (176)
- Manual of Surgery by Alexander Miles and Alexis Thomson (161)
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (150)
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (146)
- Snow-Bound by John Greenleaf Whittier (142)
- Ulysses by James Joyce (131)
- Earth’s Enigmas by Charles G. D. Roberts (130)
Judged by that the average Gutenburg reader’s had a weird Christmas: snowed in, out in the wilderness, horribly injured trying out weird erotic positions; now living off the land , trying to recreate a medieval helicopter to escape in and relying on the various charms of Lizzie Bennett and Leopold Bloom to pass the time until then or until rescue arrives. At least it’s not cost them a penny.
I’m particularly fond of between-the-wars magazines, so my Gutenburg Goodie today’s a copy of Punch from February 25th, 1920.
Read more: Books, Blogging, Internet, Open source, Project Gutenurg
