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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1277879
Remember Books? Contrary to what you may imagine, the internet started life bringing us closer to books, not tearing us away from them. A couple of decades before we began surfing the web (as we called it back then), a University of Illinois student named Michael Hart digitized a copy of the Declaration of Independence and put it up on ARPANET, the internet's forerunner, for all to read. Soon after, he began using nascent image and text scanning technology to begin scanning and uploading literary classics that were in the public domain. This evolved into Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org). It now hosts over 30,000 English titles and many more in a host of other languages. It is donor- and grant-supported and volunteer scanner/editors are adding to the collection every day. New laws have extended books' copyrights to 125 years after their publication date, but before then, it only went back to the early 1920's, leaving some great turn-of-the-century literature with authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald and H.P Lovecraft grandfathered in. Originally text text-only, and then adding an HTML option, the books have now been translated into Apple Books-friendly ePub and Amazon Kindle formats, making it a useful source of material for mobile devices. Everything on Gutenberg is free and, though the site has that old-style Craigslist-look, the search engine has been getting smarter over the years and actually can find some appropriate keywords, as well as author and title. It's also quite easy to browse the virtual aisles by category. One downside is that books brought in outside of the Apple Books or Kindle ecosystem don't sync between devices as easily as those from the official stores. But wait! There's a way around this. Both Amazon and Kindle have been keeping up a large chunk of the Gutenberg library and those sources also provide them for free. (Amazon now boasts over 10,000 of these.) You'll sometimes see slightly more polished versions of these out-of-copyright selections available for a dollar or two. Usually, they have a prettier cover and may have better proofreading. You'll also find free or very inexpensive anthologies like 50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die. Over 30,000 pages of great classic literature for free is not a bad deal. Gutenberg is still the best place to browse and search and we highly recommend using the convenient PayPal button to support the great work that they do. If you're a reader, but it's been a while since you've opened up anything that isn't on the New York Times bestseller list or Opra's Book Club, the classics can take a bit of adjusting to. The language can go beyond the eloquent by modern standards and having an e-book reader's built-in dictionary is extremely helpful. So is Google Earth you find yourself indulging in the journals of early explorers. (There's nothing like reading some of Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic journals on a scorching summer afternoon.) The books by the great British novelists (of which there are an abundance) can take some time to settle into. Modern authors do everything they can to grab you with the first paragraph. That wasn't always the case. Dickens' novels rarely start with a grisly murder and it can be a chapter or two before you feel really immersed. But when you do, they'll take you to places you may never want to leave. You'll also notice that not a lot in life, at least in terms of the mistakes humankind tends to make, has changed a great deal over the past couple of centuries. There's a lot out there to keep you entertained, informed, or at least, distracted, without paying for anything more than a basic internet connection (or slurping down some free books while you're slurping down a latte in the corner, Wi-Fi enabled espresso shop). With lockdowns limiting one's physical horizons, it's a great time to expand your literary ones. At least, until the new season of Stranger Things drops.