Free Online Books

Apparently you can sign up and get access to free books online here. I have been too busy with sock knitting and house work to take the time to browse. It sounds interesting, and it's free (although I hear it's only available if you have a US address) so it's worth looking into maybe.

I think I'd rather have the free audio books, because I don't care for the idea of only being able to read a book at my computer, but it could be very handy for books that have pictures you would like to see. Those don't come across so well in the audio format. Of course I haven't checked that out either.

If you use either of these services let me know what you think. I'd really like to get there some day, but for now I've got errands to run.

A Book Meme

Thought this might be interesting, so I stole it from Tim.

The instructions are simple:
Bold those you’ve read.
Add an asterisk* to those you have read more than once.
Italicize books you have started but couldn’t finish.
Underline those on your TBR list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
*The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
*Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
*The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
*Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
*The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

I didn't underline any books as being on my to be read list, because I don't really have one. For the most part if a book falls into my hands that I want to read I will read it. I hardly ever seek out a book. There are several books that I have read (even on this list) that I would like to read again though. Maybe I should have made up my own category and underlined the bolded books that I've read, and hope to read again.

For the most part I read the older books on this list for school purposes, if I read them more than once it was either because I liked it (The Inferno), or because the first time I skimmed it real quick, and then had to read it again to make sure I could write about it or pass a test (The Scarlet Letter). Most of the books that I started and didn't finish were school assignments where I only had to read an excerpt and choose not to finish them because they weren't to my tastes. The exceptions were:
1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - I tried, but I felt like I beating my skull in with all those words.
2. David Copperfield - I was extremely dissappointed in the 7th grade when I checked this book out from the library and found out that it had nothing to do with the magician.

Well, that took up entirely too much of the time that I should have been working today, so that will probably be it. Happy Monday folks.

Another Book Review

I just finished reading The Phantom Tollbooth yesterday, or rather I should say re-reading it. The first time that I read The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster was in the 5th grade. I remember because it was just after we had moved from Richmond, TX to Carrollton, TX. (I also only spent a couple of years at the school where I read it, so that helps to narrow it down.)

I remembered this book with fondness for how many years? How old are you in the 5th grade? 9 or 10? and I'm 30 now? I had worries that this book would not hold up to my expectations. How is it possible that a book that I thought was good 20 years ago would still hold any fascination for me now? Still, I had to give it a go, and lucky me, it was grabbed off my wishlist and gifted to me.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. All of the word play that fascinated me back then still tickled me today. The island of Conclusions that you get to by jumping, or the Doldrums where you aren't allowed to think or do anything at all, and a whole kingdom thrown into chaos when the princesses Rhyme and Reason are banished.

Maybe it's not a serious classic, but I think it's wonderful that it not only withstood the time between when I read it first, and today, but that it's lasted since the first publishing date in 1961. This is definitely going some place safe within my library so that I can re-read it again from time to time. If you haven't read it, then I think you should.

Now I believe that it's time to work on some knitting. I have spent the last few weeks reading and playing video games, and that makes knitting progress slow. So tonight is knitting night. ... Well until I go out to see The Unbearables at Trophys. I'll not be taking my sweater project into Trophys, no sir. Hmm... but maybe some mindless sock knitting that I don't need to be able to see? Time to go diving in the yarn box for some sock yarn!

Long Time No See

Wow, it's already January 8th, and still no first of year post. FAIL. Of course there are many reasons for my fail, and most of them are my own. I desire to put pictures in my post. A roadblock to pictures is that I can no longer view Flickr from work. I would talk to someone somewhere about this situation, but I suspect that my desire to be able to update my personal blog from work is a problem they would be less than sympathetic to. Of course, if you check out my Flickr you'll also find that I haven't uploaded any photos lately. I have slews of photos that need to go up. Hell, I still have slews of photos that need to get copied from the camera to the computer. I've just been filling my time with other things. I'm sure I'd be more motivated if I could play with those photos at work, but even still, it hasn't happened and that's that.
I've completely undone all the work that I had put into knitting a sweater/jacket for myself, and started over. I had knit 1.5 sleeves before realizing that I had misread the pattern from the start. I've re-finished the one sleeve and started another. I fear this warm weather gear will not see completion before we run out of cold weather here. It's still pretty fun to knit, it's just going to be a lot of stitches. I feel my hands and brain itching to knit a pair of socks just so that I can finish something quickly.

We had an excellent Christmas (despite some last minute car repairs on the 22nd) and a wonderful New Year's Eve and Day. I hope that you and your families did as well. We spent quality time with family and friends, and it was terrific. I only wish that I had one more week of goofing off before having to get back to work.

I read the Golden Compass books or His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman. I found them to be a quick enjoyable read. I think it took me 4 or 5 days to read all 3 books. I suppose that I should admit that I spent several hours a day a work reading; once I got into the story I just couldn't put them down. I will warn you that the ends of book 1 and 2 both are horrible stopping points. I would not recommend getting to the end of the book before you have the next one ready to go. Jeff is currently reading them, although in his line of work he doesn't have the luxury of reading and not getting busted. Next in line to borrow them is Tim. So if you want to borrow my copies you'll have a bit of a wait.

A Wizard Did It

Just to allay any concerns you might have, I won't be posting any details found within the latest Harry Potter book The Deathly Hallows. So don't worry if you haven't read it, you won't find spoilers here, but be careful on the rest of the internet.

Last night Jeff and I went to Borders to get our copies of the book. I'm supposed to be at work today before the bookstores start opening, so we figured what the heck. Man, that was a long wait. They had all the people that had pre-ordered the book or not getting colored wristbands, and then let each section of each color group get in line as they were called. After waiting about 20 minutes I was almost ready to bail on the idea, but I went to go look for the Yarn Harlot's latest book and ran into Erin. Erin and Ian were both at the store too!

This made the night go by much more pleasantly. We had a lot of fun looking through the presidential doodles book (we were camped out in the history section). We also chatted about Harry Potter a bit, and Jeff warned everyone that Wikipedia is not safe for the time being, there are spoilers waiting to jump out at every corner. The people watching was superb. It's really a shame that I didn't bring a camera. There was a girl that was dressed up with a carrot hat, 1 good stab at Luna Lovegood and a bunch a twats with non-matching shoes, tons of cute little tiny Harry Potters (like age 5 and under), one family with 3 kids had dressed the youngest (2ish I'd guess) like a house elf, some old guy in his finest gold SCA outfit, a chick dressed as a quidditch player that had the coolest boots, and more fake wands than you could shake anything at.

Finally around 2:30 in the morning all 4 of us had our new books (at 40% off - $20.99 +tax) and a poster (that I haven't looked at yet) and we headed to our respective homes. I forced myself not to read a single sentence of the book last night, because I wanted to get to sleep as early as I could. I'd taken a small nap before we went to the store, but not enough to get me through a work day. Speaking of which, I need to wrap this up so that I can get to work. The last thing I want to post is an excerpt from the ad for the BookPeople event (that we didn't go to, because we didn't get a voucher in advance so we weren't getting a copy of the book there).

This is from the Calender section of the Onion:
"Harry Potter dies, okay? Now that that's out of the way, maybe you can get on with your life. Better yet, spend one last evening talking children's literature with other people who should know better at this fete for the final chapter in J.K.Rowling's boy wizard saga. To help bide the time before the midnight sale of Harry Potter And The Inevitably Disappointing Conclusion, BookPeople is constructing its own "Diagon Alley"..."