Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.
The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.
Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.
Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.
Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.
Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.
Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.
Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.
The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.
Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.
Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.
Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.
Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.
Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.
TEXTBOOKS
Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.
Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.
Italian Women Writers: This site provides information about Italian women authors and features full-text titles too.
Biblioteca Valenciana: Register to use this database of Catalan and Valencian books.
Ketab Farsi: Access literature and publications in Farsi from this site.
Afghanistan Digital Library: Powered by NYU, the Afghanistan Digital Library has works published between 1870 and 1930.
CELT: CELT stands for “the Corpus of Electronic Texts” features important historical literature and documents.
Projekt Gutenberg-DE: This easy-to-use database of German language texts lets you search by genres and author.
HISTORY AND CULTURE
LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.
The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.
Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.
Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.
Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.
RARE BOOKS
Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.
Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.
Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.
2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.
Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.
Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.
Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.
Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.
MYSTERY
MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.
TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.
Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.
POETRY
The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.
Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”
Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.
Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.
Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.
QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.
CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.
PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.
MISC
Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.
World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.
DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.
I think growing up on a steady diet of fanfiction made me hate traditional book genres. Like, I don’t care what the overall “theme” is. Gimme the tags. Is there character death? Sibling rivalry? Snarky best friend? That’ll do way more to get me into a book than slotting it into one of a dozen strictly defined boxes that tells me almost nothing.
Last time I was in a bookstore I was rifling through the paperbacks going “where the hell is the Content rating? is this ‘mature’ or are we in for actual funtimes here? And where are the Content Warnings? whatcha got here book? You gonna get weird on me?” So really, Ao3 has me spoiled.
This gave me a brilliant idea for book displays at the library. #angst #enemies to lovers #plot twist
You are a good librarian!
I only have flat shelves to work with but…. I did it.
ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL. YOU ARE A GOD AMONGST MORTALS.
I found a book in the library with content tags and suddenly I realised what I’d been missing all this time.
the way tagging and sorting fan fiction has developed is really interesting to me, because its based entirely on letting a potential reader know immediately what types of tropes and emotions they’re in for if they read
describing something as “drama” doesn’t actually tell me a whole lot about the story, because drama can mean a whole lot of things. but telling me that something is “hurt/comfort” immediately informs me the story is going to have some emotional/painful moments where a characters struggles, but there will ultimately be healing and support and likely a resolution. tagging with details like “found family” or “enemies to lovers” or “so-and-so is a horrible father” lets me know the kinds of scenarios I’m in for without revealing the plot and I can select a fic to read based on those details
it’s just fascinating that we’ve decided to write and spread stories without traditional publishing methods and have developed a way to market and describe our stories that is completely different than the way stories are traditionally published, marketed, and sorted
it’s ultimately a better system, because it gives you details without spoiling the actual story and sorts based on elements and EXPERIENCES of the story instead of broad categories. not all sci-fi is going to have the found family trope, for example, but I know I’d rather pick up the one that does
It’s “meat and three veg” vs
“For main, we have three long-meats, lightly spiced, resting on a bed of mash, coupled with green beans, honeyed carrot and a rich jus.”
Which would you prefer? Like, get me pumped about what I’m about to consume!!!
Sorcerer’s Stones: 76,944 Chamber of Secrets: 85,141 Prisoner of Azkaban: 107,253 Goblet of Fire: 190,637 Order of the Phoenix: 257,045 Half-Blood Prince: 168,923 Deathly Hallows: 198,227
Word count in the LOTR Series:
The Hobbit: 95,022 Fellowship of the Ring: 177,227 Two Towers: 143,436 Return of the King: 134,462
This changed me
I’ve read/ am reading fic that are upwards to 150,000 – 200,000. You’re telling me that authors that write for fun are writing a full-length book for the fun of it? They have earned my respect 10 fold.
A friendly reminder.
Adding on to this by reminding everyone to leave feedback on fics. Seriously, y’all, fic writers put their heart, soul, blood, sweat, tears, and time into their writing. The least that you could do is let them know you enjoyed their works.
tv shows with time travel organizations/bureaus/police/agencies/whatever should have a department with instead of a tech genius eating candy, it’s a harried seamstress or fashion designer who is like
“1450 italy? does it look like I have the time to dye you wool? nO. YOU’RE GOING TO THE 1980s”
and throws shoulder pads at the hapless time agent
“I literally made three- THREE- 18th century corsets last week. You can wait until one of them gets back, or you can go sometime post-1920s, because if I have to sew one more god damn channel I will literally lose my mind.”
“Upper middle class?!?!? You told me upper class! FUCK YEAH THERE’S A DIFFERENCE!!!”
“How about kimoNO.”
“Look me in the eyes. I do not care what you want. This is the 1500s. You absolutely cannot wear trousers.”
“Another court gown?? Here’s a novel idea: go as a peasant for once in your life. Why do you do this to me? You’re fucking sadists that’s why.”
“Don’t mind me, I’ll just be up all night hand painting silk.”
“THE POLICY IS ONE MONTH’S ADVANCE NOTICE ON PRE-1900s WOMEN’S FASHION FOR A REASON, DEBRA.”
Here are the scenes you want from To Say Nothing of the Dog (1997)by Connie Wallis. Fun book, scifi classic, won a Hugo. Here is the relevant passage introducing Warder the Wardrobe Tech:
I’m reading this queer anthology and the first story is a fairytale about a queer Latina girl whose anger was so fierce it literally poisoned the rich white men who unfairly captured the transgender soldier she was in love with and my heart is literally bursting I’m going to cry
the second story is about two queer girls who leave their husbands-to-be at the altar and flee together on a boat to become pirates IM FUCKING SCREAMING THIS IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF GAY CONTENT I SIGNED UP FOR
okay this is the anthology and it’s entirely written by queer authors and inspired by the stories of real queer teens in history and it’s the most wholesome and epic thing I’ve read in a long while
wupacing 