h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Project Gutenberg was set up to be an online repository of old books that have gone out of copyright and can be distributed freely. Most, if not all, are available in a range of formats from plain text, HTML and epub so should work on just about any electronic device with a screen. While it obviously can't hold modern titles, the list of available ones comes in at a staggering 40,000 and partner sites take that number to over 100,00 titles!

These are the most downloaded titles...

http://www.gutenberg...owse/scores/top

..a quick look through that should satisfy even the most ardent of readers.

Curiously, the way h2g2 abbreviates a posted link
has in this case confused my Chrome Browser which
claims it cannot locate "guttenberg...owse".

Happily, Google offers a wide range of close possibilities
and I think I found it at:

http://www.xmarks.com/site/www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top


~jwf~

Dated writing style,
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/492

I am much conflicted by R L Stevenson.

He is (as I recollect) a great writer of fiction,
creator of character and scenery and situations.

But as an essayist his highfalutin language is
a great barrier to understanding. He gives new
meaning to the run-on sentence, the non sequitur
and self aggrandising sesquipedalian excess.

A collection of his autobiographical essays and memoirs
left me wondering why he would put his immortal soul
as a teller of tales at risk by exposing bare his
embarrassingly self-centered intellectualism.

Mind you I also felt betrayed by Lewis Carroll when
I tried to read his Logic and the Game Logic. (It's not
unlike the reaction most folkies had when Dylan went
electric but this analogy breaks down immediately upon
remembering the cultural upheaval unleashed there-by.)



~jwf~

With greatest respect for your eloquent adjectives, they are judgments within your cultural context even if they descend from that which Robert represents.

The existence of that change is proof enough that there were emotional and cultural forces that caused such, and that those forces hold sway today in the minds of modern writers should come as no surprise.

When we consider William’s work, are we likewise not obligated to adjust our mindset to a different domain? Surely as styles change, and the subjective mood of culture with them, we can at once denounce some and embrace others solely on our own preferences.

Is it really better? If I have fewer notes in my music will the King approve? Who taught you how to judge any style as “better” than any other? Alas, there are many languages. English has no just claim to being superior. Within English, there may be a claim by the people who are named English to define that language. But that claim does not prevent different cultures from changing the style of English to such an extent that the one is showing signs of becoming many.

Have you no appreciation for a period movie? I know the styles have changed. One of the marks of a truly creative mind is the ability to digest history and reflect what was old in a new synthesis. Of the many styles of today one is called “Steam Punk.” Not everyone is using any one style. Even as in the strictest examples of written English, there are still noticeable styles. Some I like, some I do not like. Other than that, I have no grounds to say one is “better” than another. Even on the grounds that one could be more understandable is relative to the background of the reader. It is all subjective.

Even as Robert explained:

1. Choice of Words.—The art of literature stands apart from among its sisters, because the material in which the literary artist works is the dialect of life; hence, on the one hand, a strange freshness and immediacy of address to the public mind, which is ready prepared to understand it; but hence, on the other, a singular limitation. The sister arts enjoy the use of a plastic and ductile material, like the modeller’s clay; literature alone is condemned to work in mosaic with finite and quite rigid words. You have seen these blocks, dear to the nursery: this one a pillar, that a pediment, a third a window or a vase. It is with blocks of just such arbitrary size and figure that the literary architect is condemned to design the palace of his art. Nor is this all; for since these blocks, or words, are the acknowledged currency of our daily affairs, there are here possible none of those suppressions by which other arts obtain relief, continuity, and vigour: no hieroglyphic touch, no smoothed impasto, no inscrutable shadow, as in painting; no blank wall, as in architecture; but every word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph must move in a logical progression, and convey a definite conventional import.

Now the first merit which attracts in the pages of a good writer, or the talk of a brilliant conversationalist, is the apt choice and contrast of the words employed. It is, indeed, a strange art to take these blocks, rudely conceived for the purpose of the market or the bar, and by tact of application touch them to the finest meanings and distinctions, restore to them their primal energy, wittily shift them to another issue, or make of them a drum to rouse the passions. But though this form of merit is without doubt the most sensible and seizing, it is far from being equally present in all writers. The effect of words in Shakespeare, their singular justice, significance, and poetic charm, is different, indeed, from the effect of words in Addison or Fielding. Or, to take an example nearer home, the words in Carlyle seem electrified into an energy of lineament, like the faces of men furiously moved; whilst the words in Macaulay, apt enough to convey his meaning, harmonious enough in sound, yet glide from the memory like undistinguished elements in a general effect. But the first class of writers have no monopoly of literary merit. There is a sense in which Addison is superior to Carlyle; a sense in which Cicero is better than Tacitus, in which Voltaire excels Montaigne: it certainly lies not in the choice of words; it lies not in the interest or value of the matter; it lies not in force of intellect, of poetry, or of humour. The three first are but infants to the three second; and yet each, in a particular point of literary art, excels his superior in the whole. What is that point?

- - - - -

What word do you find sesquipedalian?

If Robert writes to children, his style is molded to that task. When writing to writers or would-be writers, his thoughts are in the words. Molded to that task, his style reflects his thoughts.

I try to read objectively, but it's hard to get around the fact that I find many older books very hard going. I struggled through 'Jekyll & Hyde', but just couldn't endure the other short stories in the same collection. The same goes for Edgar Allen Poe, which I read more recently, and even H.P. Lovecraft.

Returning to OP: I've been aware of Project Gutenberg for some years, and applaud the initiative. However, I've got well over two shelves of books that I own, but have not read, and as long as that remains anywhere near the case, everything else can wait.

I prefer to read at the angle of a good book resting in my lap or flat on a table. Reading from an upright screen for any length of time is a problem. I only have one computer, and it's not a laptop nor an Ipad. I borrow about a hundred books a year from my local library, which is part of a network that collectively houses about six million books and other holdings. I rarely buy books except to give them as gifts to relatives who are young enough not to have filled their living spaces with clutter.

I check Project Gutenburg from time to time but I keep hoping for Agatha Christie novels, and there are only two on there. They're quite expensive on Amazon (about £3.45, I think).

Other old books I wanted I also found for free on Amazon and it just seems less hassle to get them from there because I have a kindle and it's easy.

Deb

>> It is with blocks of just such arbitrary size and figure
that the literary architect is condemned to design the palace
of his art. <<

Aye, was it not Jimi Hendrix who sayeth that
castles made of sand melt into the sea...
eventually.


>> It is, indeed, a strange art to take these blocks, rudely
conceived for the purpose of the market or the bar, and by tact
of application touch them to the finest meanings and distinctions,
restore to them their primal energy, wittily shift them to another
issue, or make of them a drum to rouse the passions. <<


Thank YOU, AEHill.

>>...this form of merit is without doubt the most sensible and
seizing, it is far from being equally present in all writers. <<



-jwf-

RE: sesquipedalianisms in RLS, I must confess he had me
dashing to a dictionary often enough to consider his essays
more a physical exercise than an intellectual pleasure. And,
I further admit that, for lack of any chance of recurrence
in my conversations, none of them has stuck firmly enough
to now be recalled. Sadly, the volume in question lies at the
bottom of a teetering stack which, like a Babble-onian tower of
unstabled blocks, defies any motivation to discover, deconstruct
or dissemble without setting loose horrendous waves of gravity.

The Computer has generally suffered the gross neglect of aesthetics for the prospect of delivering engineering marvels. One major exception might be Apple. The exception pertinent to this discussion is Kindle. Most reviews of Kindle are from the same camp that reviews technology without much concern for aesthetics. Even I thought the device was a bit pricey for its purpose. But the Kindle display really does make a difference.

I have also become a fan of the smiling face of Amazon. When Amazon bought Kindle I took pause. Now I read a troubling review from Project Gutenberg; Kindle 3 does much to lock down the device so as to not read books from sources other than Amazon. Apple set a previous example of this strategy to “protect” their aesthetic efforts. The business of Art proves disparate from many traditional businesses.

As to free books, some books are free one place and cost money at other places. To some extent, there can be a real difference in the quality of the same book, even the same book can have a significantly different versions. I have trouble seeing how I would know the tradeoffs before I purchase, albeit Amazon is letting me view extensive excerpts.

There are many new sources of free or low cost books becoming available.

On a new tangent, Amazon allows an author to self-publish a free book. How would anyone sort through a list of any size to find a book worth reading?