New medium, old message
Song for the Moment:
Song: The RiverArtist: Live
Album: Songs from Black Mountain
***
I’ve discovered something new. Or old, depending on how you look at it.
As most of you know I’m currently doing that working-stiff thing in a government office at Tunney’s Pasture, wasting away my youth and talents in an administrative job until something (anything) better comes along, or June 2 arrives and my contract is terminated.
But, leaving my possible impending joblessness and therefore adoption of life as a hobo aside for the moment, I have good news. Thanks to this new discovery I am now very much enjoying a job which could have potentially caused me to launch myself off a tall building out of sheer boredom (or perhaps triggered by hearing the sentence “can you photocopy this?” more than 216 times a day).
This discovery comes in the form of reading books online. You see, my boss knows that I’m often left with long stretches of time with not much to do but stare and the phone and yell “RING!!” intermittently in hopes of getting a call I can then promptly forward on to someone more qualified to answer it (I’m an integral part of the team, did I mention that?).
She’s told me point-blank that she doesn’t really care what I do with this extra time, as long I keep a “professional air about it.” Since salsa dancing was then obviously out of the question, I turned to my loyal friend, the Internet. I remembered that a couple years ago, right before my children’s lit exam I had realized that I had forgotten to buy/read one of the books hinted to be the focus of one of the essay questions, and had gone on a frantic search online in hopes of finding it or at the very least, the Coles Notes version. I was successful (and a little pissed that most of the books I had spent over $100 buying had been available for free), and had tucked the address away in my email for future use.
The only drawback (if you can even call it that) is that the sites are actually legit, meaning they aren’t illegally publishing these books for free on the Net. How do they get away with this, you may ask? Well, the selection is limited to books whose copyright has expired, or are at least 75 years old.
Some people may see this as hugely problematic, but since I have a habit of discarding classic literature in favour of a book with a prettier cover, it has instead opened up a whole new world of amazing stories for me to peruse at my leisure. I’m very excited about the whole thing :D.
So far I managed to get through The Time Machine (H.G. Wells) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde), and am now working my way though Around the World in 80 Days (Jules Verne).
I absolutely LOVED Dorian Gray, and insist that all of you who have not yet read it do so at the earliest possible juncture (see I’m sounding all old-timey already!).
For those of you who are interested, the two websites I’ve found with the best books are as follows:
http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/title.html
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
Page By Page has few selections, but it’s mostly all the big classics. Contrarily, the U-Penn library has a gazillion books, but it’s harder to navigate if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
There’s also Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/). It’s got a fair amount (like 18,000 books and counting), but is again hard to navigate if you don’t have a specific title or author in mind. If you’re just browsing I’d suggest clicking on the “Online book catalogue” link, and on the left-hand sidebar there’s a link called “Top 100.” That’s where all the goodies are.
Happy reading all!! I heart summer :D.
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