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How/Where to read for free

conscientiousPeach2999 January 16th, 2023

I’m opening up this question for all :)


the only way I know is going to a library


any other ways?


21
HealingTalk January 18th, 2023

@conscientiousPeach2999

Many great books, some of the best literature and essays ever published, have lost their property rights and are in the public domain.

From Plato and Aristotle to Lewis Carroll, Conan Doyle, Shakespeare, Oscar Wild, Mark Twain, Jane Austen... Zillions of outstanding books.

Here is a ranking by Goodreads based on ratings by their members: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/public-domain

Any book you see listed there, you can download for free from the sites pointed out by @RarelyCharlie HERE


1 reply
HealingTalk January 18th, 2023

Another list of superb books you can download from Project Gutemberg or Open Library:

https://www.shortform.com/best-books/genre/best-public-domain-books-of-all-time

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Kittenclaws January 18th, 2023

Hi! I read online through internetarchive.org They have a lot of stuff for free, though I don't think many really new books. But I was able to finish several fantasy series that I couldn't afford to buy back in the day. Cons: the books are scanned page by page and uploaded, so the quality varies and the older books pages can be kind of dark and hard to read, but there are tools to enlarge the typing which is what I do.

slowdecline48 January 19th, 2023

@conscientiousPeach2999 RarelyCharlie's links are choice. If you haven't clicked on those, then you should.

May I also suggest archive-dot-org... You can search for any topic & limit the results to text-based documents. A lot of books require login for "borrowing" but there are also tons of texts that are free to download, in several formats including PDF & plaintext.

(That's not the actual URL but you can figure it out)

2 replies
Kittenclaws January 19th, 2023

@slowdecline48

I mentioned this exact site in the post just above yours but you described it better :) I believe the URL I have in my msg is correct.


1 reply
slowdecline48 January 22nd, 2023

@Kittenclaws Oh? Your caution about file quality is a good one...I hadn't thought to mention it. *Homer Simpson voice* D'oh!

I finally remembered & found it here.

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Ravis889 January 22nd, 2023

@conscientiousPeach2999

* Borrowing books.

* There are sites online that let you pirate books.

* Audible free trial?