Good Free Ebooks

[The_Consumer]

I've been reading books on my gp32 since i bought it and i would like to recommend some.
all the books i list here are available free for download (descriptions were shamelessly ripped from random websites).

Q: a novel by Luther Blissett / wu ming foundation
16th Century. Two main characters. One wants to overthrow the social order. The other is a spy in the service of the forces who want to maintain it. Q is the spy, in the pay of Father Carafa, an ultra conservative figure, rapidly rising up the hierarchy of the Catholic church. An epic from the bowels of history, set in central Europe and Northern Italy. Someone described the book as "a theological western".

my notes: an epic, the style of the writing is a bit rough and unsmooth at times.


Mother of demons by Eric flint
A human starship has crash-landed on Ishtar, a planet inhabited by
the gukuy, bronze-age land squid. First contact is violent, and the
humans (who are the titular demons) soon find themselves forced to
take sides in a tribal war....

my notes: a rather good semi-light read.


The Philosophical Strangler by Eric flint
Greyboar's professional career as an assassin for hire falls prey to his penchant for philosophy as moral qualms intervene to cause disaster in even the simplest tasks. The latest fantasy by the author of 1632 features an angst-ridden hero, a fast-talking side-kick, fast-paced action, and bawdy humor. Though sometimes the comedy misses the mark, Flint tells a multilayered tale of camaraderie in the face of misadventure with apologies to the great philosophers.

my notes: a bit like discworld meeting philosophy, another great semi-light read.


54: a novel by wu ming foundation
1954. Hollywood actors, cold warriors, mobsters, drug dealers and homing pigeons. What will Yugoslavian president Tito do, now that Joe Stalin is dead? What is the hidden link between Lucky Luciano in his Italian exile, Cary Grant in schizophrenic combat with himself and a stolen TV set which turns out to be self-conscious and sensitive to boot?

my notes: while not as heavy as Q, it managed to keep me interested all the way through.


There you go: four completely free ebooks.
I'd like to see some people recommend me ebooks, since I'm constantly reading. B)

 

[Alpha2]

http://www.baen.com/library/

A lot of good fiction straight from the publisher!

The site's a little confusing but there are downloads in various formats. The belief being that if you enjoy the books they offer for free, you'll pay to read some of the other books in the series. Hit the "Authors" tab to bring up the writers and their offered books. There are also a few free chapters for some of the books they dont offer the full version of.


Personally, I recomend books by David Drake and David Weber.

 

[starpause]

thanks for the recomendations! direct links rock.

the first stuff i read on my gp32 was all cyberpunk, i'm still a big fan of that sort of science fiction. here's a thread i started on that stuff, with links to doctorow and others:

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=19733&hl=

Project Gutenberg is an insane resource ... it's a bit daunting actually. their top100 is chalked with goodies. i recently read the trial by kafka and am now reading siddhartha by hermann hesse.

i hope that the gp2x is better for reading manga, because it's a nasty hassle w/ the gp32. however, i recenlty read paper copies of Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue. i can recomend it to anyone, it's one of the few comics i've read where i had to stop and just wonder at some of the shit ... very zen =)

 

[lubidog]

Great thread!

 

[The_Consumer]

here's some gutenberg author recommondations:

H.G. Wells
lots of great early science fiction. (try war of the worlds)

Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes stories.

 

[Mirrorhead]

This is another great resource with almost 20.000 free ebooks: Blackmask Online.

 

[Quiest]

Thanks! I think this should be put in the reviews section, no?

 

[BaDToaD]

Thanks for the links.

Don't rule out fan fiction. Just make sure you read the forums for whatever you're into and read the recomendations as there is some truly dire stuff our there. Try to find finished fictions too as there is nothing more annoying then getting into a story only to find it stop half way through.

I quite like the Harry Potter books and the second book in one particular fan fiction trilogy is the best HP I have ever read. OK the author could do with an editor but the story is more gripping than anything by Rowling with the possible exception of Goblet of Fire IMHO. One of my friends read the first book of the trilogy as it was posted on the net as a fake original HP book. He was convinced it was real until I showed him the next two in the trilogy.

PS I always mention Interparse in these sorts of threads too. It's simply the best text formatting tool available with options for everything from removing blank lines to converting extended ascii etc. Great for those texts that you can't get looking nice on you GP32 or Palm etc.

 

[The_Consumer]

Thanks! I think this should be put in the reviews section, no?

​

:rolleyes: well, of course! it's just that... look behind you!
<runs away>

i just plain forgotten about the review section, sorry

 

[The_Consumer]

some stuff

what, no links?

 

[Alpha2]

I get a little frightened off by fan fiction, they dont always adhere to the rules of the subject mater or devolve into hard core pornography. I'm sure there's some decent stuff out there though, I remember a friend had started writing her own Harry Potter Fan-Fic and it felt like I was reading an actual book from the series dispite her own original character addition.

Also another source for ebooks:
http://www.memoware.com/?screen=search_res...ory^!Scifi~!

They tend to have a lot of PDA and Ereader formats of actual novels and originals, not sure if any of them are shareware currently though but I assume the ones in .Doc format are complete.

 

[BaDToaD]

some stuff

what at no links?

​

OK here you are. The best HP fan fiction trilogy I've personally read. There are others that are highly rated too.

Harry Potter Psychic Serpent Trilogy.

Ask me for more links in a couple of months when you've finished reading it. It's a lot of reading. i.e. 1st book big, 2nd book huge, 3rd book OMFG!

PS This is the fic where the second in the trilogy is my personal favorite HP book ever. Everyone from teenagers to adults that I've recommended this trilogy to have been totally engrosssed. Let me know what you think.

 

[lubidog]

Okay, this is a silly question, but what do you guys use to read these books with on your gp32?

And when I go to these sites, I don't see any links to download them as ebooks...?

Or am I just stupid....?

I never knew there was so much stuff like out there, am really excited by all this! I even found Enid Blyton fanfiction sites....

 

[timeslip]

most internet providers also (undocumented) offer free access to newgroups and there are plenty of newgroups offering EVERYTHING you could possibly ask for, including not particularly legal brand new books as well. try alt.binaries.ebooks.

Not that i condone piracy of course..... :blink:

 

[BaDToaD]

Okay, this is a silly question, but what do you guys use to read these books with on your gp32?

And when I go to these sites, I don't see any links to download them as ebooks...?

Or am I just stupid....?

I never knew there was so much stuff like out there, am really excited by all this! I even found Enid Blyton fanfiction sites....

​

Personally I much prefer using an old Palm Mono PDA for reading as it's much better for you eyes when reading in bed. Doesn't wake the GF and cause hassle either. My personal favorite is an M500. I have a 128mb card filled with about 300 ebooks all in a package that fits comfortably in a shirt pocket. You can pick up M500s for about £30-40 including p&p off ebay. less than that if you are prepared to keep a close eye on things. Even a 2mb M100 which can be bought for as little as a tenner off ebay will hold two or three full size novels. An M105 with 8mb for about £15 will hold lots.

As for downloading as ebooks. The GP32 readers cope with straight txt and some do other formats too. Use the link in my earlier post to interparse. It allows you to format even difficult texts. Just save as .txt for text or .pdb for palm database.

 

[lubidog]

This is excellent! I am stuck out here in Germany, and although I do speak German (badly), I long for Good old english books. I will get a palm, and am gonna get into this. Really thanks for the advice!

 

[Alpha2]

Yeah, every time I get into Ebooks (sporatically over the years) I usually look for some sort of converter. Before I had to find programs that could convert eReader into .txt or .doc which could them be converted to .pdb for my Clie PDA but sinec that's dead I'm starting to look into what programs the for the GP32 and 2X, I just have no idea what they'll be able to read but I'd assume it's regular .txt or .rtf, Hopefully there's a way to convert .pdb into regular text files without losing the formating.

 

[lubidog]

Okay, this is a silly question, but what do you guys use to read these books with on your gp32?

And when I go to these sites, I don't see any links to download them as ebooks...?

Or am I just stupid....?

I never knew there was so much stuff like out there, am really excited by all this! I even found Enid Blyton fanfiction sites....

​

Personally I much prefer using an old Palm Mono PDA for reading as it's much better for you eyes when reading in bed. Doesn't wake the GF and cause hassle either. My personal favorite is an M500. I have a 128mb card filled with about 300 ebooks all in a package that fits comfortably in a shirt pocket. You can pick up M500s for about £30-40 including p&p off ebay. less than that if you are prepared to keep a close eye on things. Even a 2mb M100 which can be bought for as little as a tenner off ebay will hold two or three full size novels. An M105 with 8mb for about £15 will hold lots.

As for downloading as ebooks. The GP32 readers cope with straight txt and some do other formats too. Use the link in my earlier post to interparse. It allows you to format even difficult texts. Just save as .txt for text or .pdb for palm database.

​

I am really sorry to be such a noob, but you don't know of any decent faq page...

I'm looking through google, but have no idea what inerparse means. The link brings me to the harry potter first chapter page...

Feel free to ignore me, flame me etc...

 

[BaDToaD]

Would I flame you Lubi

It's interparse not inerparse. There's a link to it in my earlier post farther back in this thread. If you're still stuck post here I'll review the Thread at work tomorrow. GTG as baby needs feeding and then I'm hitting the sack.

Edit: Brief info update.

Best freeware palm reader is IMHO cspotrun named after the spot the dog books I believe. It's fine for any 4.1 and below OS palm device. Not sure if it runs on OS 5 devices but as I said the old green screen m500 greyscale is my favorite book reading device. Failing that Palm M105, m100 or even an old Palm IIIxe or Palm III. I find my GP32 and My Sony Clie too bright at night but they are nice during the day. Colour screens eat batteries too. The greyscale palms run for hours and hours even at night. If your eyesight is not good stick to the M500 or Palm III series as the M100 series screen is a good deal smaller. cspotrun does allow you to change font size between three sizes though. A blind man at 50 feet could read the large font but you only get a few words on the screen then lol.

Right I really am off to bed now. Trusty palm m500 in tow sans the Draco trilogy fan fiction which is shaping up to be as good as they say it is

 

[The_Consumer]

silly me, i forgot to mension my favorit childhood scifi writer
jules verne

and don't forget, there's more to poe then 'the raven'
poe