Comments on: Ten best books from Project Gutenberg

Question: Ten best books from Project Gutenberg

mwhybark — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 23:41:56 -0800

What are the ten best books available from Project Gutenberg?

One rule: if someone's listed one of yours, pick another!

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 02:47:50 -0800

(Not answering your question, sorry, but you might like this site as well.)

By: ed\26h

ed\26h — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 03:38:35 -0800

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Problems of Philosophy by Earl Bertrand Arthur William 3rd Russell

There are two I like. I don't care for reading off the screen too much though.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 04:05:10 -0800

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Emma by Jane Austen

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

By: Hypharse

Hypharse — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 04:59:05 -0800

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Pilgrim's Progress blah blah blah by John Bunyan

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by ~~Lewis Carroll~~ Charles Dodgson

Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, if you want to bawl like a sissy
--
I wonder why they don't have Finnegan's Wake.

By: grabbingsand

grabbingsand — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 05:28:44 -0800

Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Complete by Dante Alighieri

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

The Man Who Was Thursday, a nightmare by G. K. Chesterton

That's three for now. I'll owe you seven.

By: misteraitch

misteraitch — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 06:01:42 -0800

For some fine 17th Century prose: The Anatomy of Melancholy by 'Democritus Jr.' (Robert Burton); Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend by Sir Thomas Browne; Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.

By: mecran01

mecran01 — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 06:31:36 -0800

Orwell's 1984, from Gutenberg Australia (where the copyright expired a little earlier)

By: brownpau

brownpau — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 07:02:54 -0800

Hypharse - I don't think anyone wants to type out Finnegan's Wake. :P

By: mwhybark

mwhybark — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 07:34:54 -0800

say now - International Gutenbergs!

Neat stuff, keep it coming!

By: mwhybark

mwhybark — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 07:44:04 -0800

Also, I chased down a bunch of Wodehouse on ManyBooks, recently, to read on my ancient Palm.

By: caddis

caddis — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 07:51:18 -0800

Beowulf

Eagerly watched
Hygelac's kinsman his cursed foe,
how he would fare in fell attack.
Not that the monster was minded to pause!
Straightway he seized a sleeping warrior
for the first, and tore him fiercely asunder,
the bone-frame bit, drank blood in streams,
swallowed him piecemeal: swiftly thus
the lifeless corse was clear devoured,
e'en feet and hands.

By: teg

teg — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 07:54:22 -0800

I love hearing my speech software mangle a Southern accent.
Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 08:12:19 -0800

I'm on a Thoreau kick lately

Civil Disobedience
Excursions
A Plea for Captain John Brown
Walden
Walking
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Wild Apples

Also,

Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays
Stephen Levy Hackers, Heroes of a Computer Revolution

And I'm looking forward to this one,

Arthur Jerome Eddy, Two Thousand Miles on an Automobile Being a Desultory Narrative of a Trip Through New England, New York, Canada, and the West, By "Chauffeur"

By: zadcat

zadcat — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 08:33:34 -0800

A lot of Gutenberg has the musty smell of library books nobody's touched in half a century, but I find it's usually interesting to check out the books written by "anonymous" or "unknown" - they have three different translations of the Thousand and One Nights (the third being the overly florid Sir Richard Burton version); various Bible versions; Babylonian and Assyrian literature (a lot of their translations have been superseded by more recent scholarship, but many are still readable); check out Beowulf, Confucius, the Mabinogion, the Nibelungenlied or the Dhammapada.

By: Quinbus Flestrin

Quinbus Flestrin — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 14:30:03 -0800

Three Men in a Boat

the musty smell of library books nobody's touched in half a century
You say that as though it were necessarily a negative. There's bound to be lots of crap, but also there are neglected gems; popularity and fashion are no guarantee of quality.

By: zadcat

zadcat — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 14:47:40 -0800

You say that as though it were necessarily a negative.

No, just a fact. A lot of the books are out of fashion but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Incidentally, I love Three Men in a Boat - in that vein I notice there's a mess of stories by Saki and a growing list of P.G. Wodehouse titles that are falling into the public domain as well.

By: Hypharse

Hypharse — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 17:43:13 -0800

I just noticed they have Flatland: a romance of many dimensions.

And brownpau, you're probably right. I didn't stop to think that actual people were typing these in. I just figured they were done by.. I don't know.. magic robots. The FAQ set me straight though.

By: Zed_Lopez

Zed_Lopez — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 18:18:37 -0800

Joyce didn't die till 1941. His stuff's still in copyright (though it was public domain for a few years in the '90's), and his heirs are jerks.