When Ruth Finnegan published Oral Literature in Africa in 1970, she was awarded an Order of the British Empire for her exhaustive and pioneering research on the history of storytelling in Africa. Unfortunately, the book was so expensive that it was largely out of reach for African readers.
Now it’s out of print, but the book and many of the audio recordings Finnegan made in her research will soon be available through unglue.it, a kickstarter-style campaign to release out-of-print books.
Unglue.it raised $7,578 from 259 supporters—mostly in the library world—to make the book available “on any device, in any format, forever.” The money will help offset the costs of producing the e‑book and a digital archive of recordings and photographs taken during Finnegan’s fieldwork. In addition to the ebook, the publisher, Open Book Publishers, will produce free, downloadable pdf editions of the work.
Unglue.it has three other titles in fundraising mode: Love Like Gumbo by Nancy Rawles, a set of young reader books and the autobiography 6–321 by Michael Laser. Using the kickstarter-style model, Unglue.it is trying to raise an agreed-upon fair licensing fee to release the books under Creative Commons licensing, completely liberated from digital rights management technology.
Thomas Pynchon has never made things particularly easy for his publishers. He has famously shunned any kind of media attention for decades. (Book tours? No thanks.) And, during recent years, he resisted the idea of republishing his books in electronic format. But that has all officially changed with Penguin’s announcement that you can now purchase eight of Pynchon’s works in electronic format, with prices ranging from $9.99 to $12.99. The books (listed below) can be found on Amazon right here.
Against the Day
Gravity’s Rainbow
Inherent Vice
Mason & Dixon
Slow Learner
The Crying of Lot 49
V.
Vineland
Find a great number of classics in our collection of 300 Free eBooks.
We started the week expecting to publish one David Foster Wallace post. Then, because of the 50th birthday celebration, it turned into two. And now three. We spent some time tracking down free DFW stories and essays available on the web, and they’re all now listed in our collection, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices. But we didn’t want them to escape your attention. So here they are — 23 pieces published by David Foster Wallace between 1989 and 2011, mostly in major U.S. publications like The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. Enjoy, and don’t miss our other collections of free writings by Philip K. Dick and Neil Gaiman.
Today is the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens. He was born in Portsmouth, England on February 7, 1812, the second of eight children. When he was 12 years old his father was sent to debtors’ prison, along with most of his family, and Charles went to live with a friend of the family, an impoverished old lady. He was forced to quit school and work in a blacking factory, where he pasted labels on jars of shoe polish.
Dickens never forgot those early traumas. He incorporated his experiences and observations of social injustice into his works, including David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. (Find free novels below.) He was the most popular writer of Victorian England, a virtual rock star in the days before recorded music and movies. His stories, published serially in magazines, were eagerly awaited by the public. Most have remained in print ever since.
The Dickens bicentenary is being celebrated with special events around the world, including a wreath-laying ceremony this morning at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, where actor and filmmaker Ralph Fiennes, author Claire Tomalin, and two of Dickens’s descendants are scheduled to give readings. For a listing of events today and throughout the year, go to Dickens2012.org. Also take a look at the short retrospective of Dickens-inspired movies (above) from the British Film Institute.
To help celebrate, we have gathered together some of the best Dickens material from across the Web:
Oliver Twist: Another classic by David Lean, this 1948 film stars John Howard Davies as Oliver and Alec Guinness as Fagin. In 1999 it was ranked 46th on the BFI’s list of the top 100 British films of all time.
A Tale of Two Cities: The 1958 film by Ralph Thomas, starring Dirk Bogarde as Sydney Carton and Dorothy Tutin as Lucie Manette. The film was shot in France’s Loire Valley, with several thousand U.S. soldiers, posted in nearby Orleans, cast as extras.
A Christmas Carol: George C. Scott gives an excellent performance as Ebenezer Scrooge in this critically acclaimed 1984 film directed by Clive Donner. It premiered in America on CBS television, and was released theatrically in Great Britain.
David Copperfield: A 2000 U.S.-Irish television adaptation starring Hugh Dancy as David Copperfield, Michael Richards as Wilkins Micawber and Sally Field as Betsey Trotwood.
The Pickwick Papers: A 1952 film, adapted and directed by Noel Langley and starring James Hayter as Samuel Pickwick.
Underwritten by JPMorgan Chase, the archive lets you navigate through documents by theme and by type of document. Or you can simply use a dedicated search engine. Once you find a document of interest, you can zoom into the content. But, I am not seeing a way to scroll up and down the enlarged pages — something that seriously limits your ability to read any given text. If I’m missing something please let me know in the comments below …
If you’re not intimately familiar with his novels, then you assuredly know major films based on Dick’s work – Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darklyand Minority Report. Today, we bring you another way to get acquainted with his writing. We’re presenting a selection of Dick’s stories available for free on the web. Below we have culled together 11 short stories from our collections. Some of the stories collected here have also found their way into the recently-published book, Selected Stories by Philip K. Dick, which features an introduction by Jonathan Lethem.
The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains — Read Online
And, since it’s certainly timely, we leave you with Gaiman’s New Year’s Eve message delivered to a crowd in Boston several years ago:
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. May your coming year be a wonderful thing in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously.
I hope you will make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked and you will have people to love and to like in return. And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now — I hope that you will, when you need to, be wise and that you will always be kind. And I hope that somewhere in the next year you surprise yourself.
Below, you will find the book list offered up by the astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium, and popularizer of science. Where possible, we have included links to free versions of the books, all taken from our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks collections. Or you can always download a professionally-narrated book for free from Audible.com. Details here.
If you’re looking for a more extensive list of essential works, don’t miss The Harvard Classics, a 51 volume series that you can now download online.
1.) The Bible (eBook) — “to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.”
4.) Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos.”
5.) The Age of Reasonby Thomas Paine (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world.”
6.) The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself.”
7.) The Art of Warby Sun Tsu (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art.”
8.) The Prince by Machiavelli (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it.”
Tyson concludes by saying: “If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world.”
He has also added some more thoughts in the comments section below, saying:
Thanks for this ongoing interest in my book suggestions. From some of your reflections, it looks like the intent of the list was not as clear as I thought. The one-line comment after each book is not a review but a statement about how the book’s content influenced the behavior of people who shaped the western world. So, for example, it does no good to say what the Bible “really” meant, if its actual influence on human behavior is something else. Again, thanks for your collective interest. ‑NDTyson
Looking for free, professionally-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free trial with Audible.com, you can download two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.
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When Ruth Finnegan published Oral Literature in Africa in 1970, she was awarded an Order of the British Empire for her exhaustive and pioneering research on the history of storytelling in Africa. Unfortunately, the book was so expensive that it was largely out of reach for African readers.
