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I live everyday life in the past: archaeologist, anthropologist, historian. 1000 databased books in home.
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Activity Summary
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Reviews Written: 46
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Member Visits: 324
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Total Visits: 833
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About zither
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The 1000 books at home does not count the many e-books I have, which are often much easier to search. See below for two of my favorite free book sites, which help me re-create the past.
By nature, I'm just a fast reader. Literally, I've read a couple or three big fat historical romances in a day (if I could stand it any more). Going through non-fiction for specific information (not needing to learn a new subject), I can get through a dozen books in a day. On the other hand, I'm still in the first part of Faraday's handbook of chemical experimentation, after two days two weeks apart. Some things just need time to absorb.
Since there is no area for rating such book sites, let me do a brief review here:
Gutenberg (*****): the grandaddy, putting out etexts since 1976. Specializes in pure TXT files anyone can read. Some projects go to HTML, usually used for pictorial books. Most other online libraries are based on the vast work of PG's volunteers, who edit the texts to almost perfect readability. Constantly expanding their offerings.
Internet Archive (****): based in a digitization process subsidized by MSN. Boosts the badawfulhostile DejaVu format. Has PDFs good to superb, usually complete, in colour or B&W, but some are too messed up to read. TXT files are machine-generated, obviously never seen by human eyes before the consumer. Check the detail pages to make sure the book isn't just one volume of several: it's common for them to not have all volumes, too. The Canadian Library scans are usually the best if you have a choice.
Google Books (**): mixes books you have to buy in hard format, overpriced commercial e-reprints, and free Public Domain books in full. Which of these show up in the database varies from month to month. Their PDFs are fine for all-text books, but because they have a horror of giving you even a single drawing, they not only gut picture books, but often remove big chunks of necessary text (Our Railways as an example). For something like that, you have to jump to the page online and Save to Disc the image of that page. Then again, some of their PDFs will only read on the newest Reader, which won't run on the many older machines used by people who want free books.
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