Free public domain books

If you can't find a public domain book in the library or would just prefer something downloadable, there are lots of good sites out there. A couple I like are Project Gutenberg and LibriVox.

Project Gutenberg has over 49,000 free e-books - you can download them as Kindle e-books, EPUB files, or read them online in your browser. If you don't have a particular book or author in mind, it can be fun to browse the categories and subcategories on their Bookshelf page.

LibriVox is great if you prefer audiobooks. Everything on the site is read by volunteers, so the performance quality varies, but some works have multiple versions available, so you can choose which readers you prefer. You can download a whole book as a zip file, stream individual tracks, or subscribe in iTunes.

Some of my favorites from these sites include Jill the Reckless by P.G. Wodehouse (LibriVox) and The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar by Maurice Leblanc (Project Gutenberg). Feel free to recommend your favorites in the comments!

What Is Wrong With Copyright?

With the beginning of a new year, we often think of new things. Whether they are gifts received or new opportunities. One thing we will not be getting this year is all the works that would have become public domain if the copyright law had not changed in 1978. Instead, we get to wait until 2049 for them to go into the public domain. Some of the works include Walt Disney's Peter Pan, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Ian Fleming's Casino Royale (the first James Bond novel), and many others. For more information, see this link http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/pre1976 from the Center For The Study Of The Public Domain.