July 6, 2006 @ 11:57 am | Filed under:
Books Oh my goodness.
In celebration of Project Gutenberg’s 35th anniversary, the World eBook Library Consortia is offering free downloads of its entire collection from July 4th through August 4th. I have barely scratched the surface but there’s some fine stuff there, including tons of scans of children’s books—with color illustrations! This is really very exciting. Ambleside Online users will be happy to know that Ruskin’s King of the Golden River is there, in a full color pdf.
Other offerings: the Classic Literature Collection, the Education Resource Collection (whatever that is), the eMovies Collection, and about a million more books. Literally. A million. More than a million. Books. To download. For free.
Oh, I’m all trembly just browsing. Bye-bye hard drive.
(Major HT to Jinkies.)
July 6, 2006 @ 8:20 am | Filed under:
Books I have a realtor coming this afternoon to laugh hysterically when I tell her how soon I’d like to get the house on the market. (This weekend would be nice.) (But totally unrealistic.) (But I’m an optimist.) (An exhausted one.)
Anyhoo. Saw this post by Gail Gauthier about a new book called Tintin and the Secret of Literature
, and one day when things settle down around here (bahahahahahaha, oh, that was a good one) I will enjoy reading it. We are huge Tintin fans. HUGE. Beanie is catapulting herself toward literacy mainly because she wants to be able to read the Tintin collections she got for her birthday ALL BY HERSELF. She will pore over the pictures for hours, literally. Jane reads the books to her, I read them to her, Rose spirits them away and reads them to herself.
So I very much look forward to reading more about this:
“McCarthy shows how the themes this story generates—expulsion from home, violation of the sacred, the host-guest relationship turned sour, and anxieties around questions of forgery and fakeness—are the same that have fuelled and troubled writers from the classical era to the present day. His startling conclusion is that Tintin’s ultimate ‘secret’ is that of literature itself.”
Thanks for the tip-off, Gail.
I’m so motivated it hurts. Especially in my lower back. Note to self: bend at the knees, not waist. But I’m making headway. Sent four big bags of Stuff to the thrift shop this weekend, and put just about as many out for the trashmen this morning. But it feels a bit like trying to melt an iceberg with a blow dryer. There’s a long way to go…
I want a Stuff Collector to come along and take away my Stuff. The wonderful Lesley Austin of Small Meadow Press blogged today about a company that will take Stuff of the Electronic Variety off your hands, wipe its memory clean, and recycle it—if you’re willing to pay the shipping costs. Which I am not. I’ll just have to go on melting my own icebergs.
