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Being a bit of a skinflint, and having a couple of hours to kill each day, commuting, I read a lot. Usually I've got a stack of books from the '3 for 2' sale, but the costs still mount up. (Yes, I know I could go to the library.) As the proud owner of a lovely ipad, and having the iBooks app and the Kindle Reader app, I'm aware that there's a shed load of free books available, most of which are quite old. I've just downloaded 'Master Of The World' by Jules Verne, but I'd appreciate any other recommendations of good, old stuff that I can pick up free and for gratis. I like sci-fi / mysteries, that sort of thing. Might see if the Sherlock Holmes stuff is free. Any other suggestions from you well-read people? |
Classic book recommendations
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boo 13,901 posts
Seen 20 hours ago
Registered 18 years ago -
Sherlock Homes, The Lost World are all on there. -
You cheeky monkey, didn't you do exactly the same thread last year? 
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MetalDog 24,076 posts
Seen 3 years ago
Registered 20 years agoYou paid for an ipad and now you're quibbling over the cost of books? =)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is good. -
Dougs 100,414 posts
Seen 20 hours ago
Registered 18 years agoProject Gutenberg rocks. -
Fab4 8,924 posts
Seen 1 year ago
Registered 15 years agoMary Shelley's Frankenstein -
Tricky 5,088 posts
Seen 3 days ago
Registered 20 years agoCrispyXUK64 wrote:
Sherlock Homes, The Lost World are all on there.
^ This.
Sherlock Holmes is always superb and they were the first thing I got on iBooks.gif)
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Hemingway, Graham Greene and Kingsley Amis are my favourite classic writers. -
Anyway, some free classics I have on my iPod Touch and which might appeal to you are:
Tom Jones
Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Pride & Prejudice
Raymond Chandler
EM Forster
Kim
Vanity Fair
War & Peace
Anna Karenina
tons of Wodehouse
If we then move on to, ahem, stuff which can be easily found but which might not be 100% in the public domain, then frankly you're laughing. -
HarryPalmer 6,357 posts
Seen 22 hours ago
Registered 15 years agoDracula
oh and if Chandler's free, go for it, amazing writer. -
Never finished Dracula, I always found it's structure difficult to stick with. -
DrR0b3rts 489 posts
Seen 1 day ago
Registered 15 years agoG.K Chesterton 'The Man Who Was Thursday'. Brilliant mystery/fantasy/surreal. -
Alastair 24,828 posts
Seen 17 hours ago
Registered 20 years agoDr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Not mysteries, but still great:
The Odyssy (sp?)
Argonautica
Also, what Metaldog said - classic books are dirt cheap anyway. Like about 2 quid. -
Dougs 100,414 posts
Seen 20 hours ago
Registered 18 years agoCheck out Dumas (Count of Monte Cristo, Man in the Iron Mask, 3 Muskateers) too. -
glaeken 12,070 posts
Seen 7 months ago
Registered 17 years agoMetalDog wrote:
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is good.
Do you know which version you read? Just I read a full and complete version recently and while I did enjoy it Verne kept listing things seen outside the Nautilus window which amount to lists of latin fish names that sometimes went on for over a page. It became really tedious reading lists of names of things when I have no idea what any of them were. I just wondered if these bits were normally cut out of the book and only in the full version I read. It just seemed like exactly the sort of thing that would be edited out by any good editor. -
LockeTribal 4,740 posts
Seen 6 minutes ago
Registered 14 years agoI would say Don Quixote as it's the first example of a modern novel, but it's very difficult to read in my experience. I just about managed to get through the first book, and didn't even look at the second. -
nakedlunch 80 posts
Seen 8 months ago
Registered 12 years agoIf they have it, I heartily recommend 'The Good Soldier Svejk' by Hasek. For anyone who enjoyed Catch 22, this is every bit as funny and savage in its critique of war. One of those books you read then want to tell everyone about! -
glaeken 12,070 posts
Seen 7 months ago
Registered 17 years agoI would recomend War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. I only actually read this for the first time recently and I still think its stands up very well. It's actually fasinating to me that at the time it was written they had little idea of what might be out there in our solar system so the idea of invaders from Mars was looked on as sort of plausible. -
MetalDog 24,076 posts
Seen 3 years ago
Registered 20 years agoglaeken wrote:
MetalDog wrote:
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is good.
Do you know which version you read? Just I read a full and complete version recently and while I did enjoy it Verne kept listing things seen outside the Nautilus window which amount to lists of latin fish names that sometimes went on for over a page. It became really tedious reading lists of names of things when I have no idea what any of them were. I just wondered if these bits were normally cut out of the book and only in the full version I read. It just seemed like exactly the sort of thing that would be edited out by any good editor.
Just skip the boring bits, man. -
glaeken 12,070 posts
Seen 7 months ago
Registered 17 years agoWell I did in the end but I hate doing that. I don't think you can critique something if you skipped sections of it. I just wonder if the extensive lists were in all versions as it was the biggest flaw in the book. -
MetalDog 24,076 posts
Seen 3 years ago
Registered 20 years agoA lot of old stuff is like that. Writing fashions change, that's all. I decided years ago that life was too short to drag myself through pages of boring when I could just flip ahead to the next interesting bit =) -
comradetony 200 posts
Seen 2 years ago
Registered 13 years agoWar and Peace is a great book. Not as hard to digest as I thought it would be! Had to read it for uni, now I've read it a few times for fun. It's almost an instruction manual in how to be both a working class and rich Russian.
...Coz you know, it's an important life skill.gif)
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I would get Dracula and Frankenstein down you. Both brilliant. -
If you're going to read Russian Classics it's worth making sure it's a good translation. There are some really shitty ones about that completely ruin what are generally very readable novels. -
RyanDS 14,073 posts
Seen 2 hours ago
Registered 13 years agoHP Lovecraft -
Tricky 5,088 posts
Seen 3 days ago
Registered 20 years agoHarryPalmer wrote:
oh and if Chandler's free, go for it, amazing writer.
God, I wish. Always keep meaning to get all of his books to have permanently but then I look at the price that bookshops still charge for his work. They can feck right off. -
Trowel 24,512 posts
Seen 2 days ago
Registered 18 years agoAn Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge -
Dougs 100,414 posts
Seen 20 hours ago
Registered 18 years agoAnother 25 years before Chandler's works are up for grabs -
Dirtbox 92,595 posts
Seen 21 hours ago
Registered 19 years ago -
MetalDog wrote:
Just skip the boring bits, man.
Like the elf songs in Lord of the Rings.
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