Raoul's China Saloon (V5.0) Beta
Da Woiks: Links, Library, News and Other Stuff More Useful Than You Are => Le Laowai Liberation League Labor & Lifestyle Lending Library (ON-TOPIC) => Topic started by: Schnerby on November 23, 2009, 02:57:01 AM
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Many of us lack access to all the books in English we would like. Project Gutenberg has tonnes of books available in both audio books and text files. The text files can then be copied to your iPod/mp4/whatever to read/listened to some other time.
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page)
Ebooks can be a great way to pass time on train rides bfbfbfbfbf
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I haven't read one yet, but my kid has an itouch and he reads them all the time.
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If you wouldn't mind getting his source and adding it here, it would be appreciated. agagagagag
Project Gutenberg digitises books that are copyright free in the USA. Apart from torents, there must be other sources.
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Amazon.com also has Kindle* readers, which will download e-books for you.
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I asked him type in how he does it (on his itouch.) Below is what he wrote:
Try typing in "Stanza" on the search tab. If you look hard enough, you can get wonderful books, like "The Call Of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft, for instance. Of course not all the books on Stanza are free, but I really don't suggest checking your gifted horse for cavities.
Does that make sense to you?
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Kindle is pretty pricy, not available everywhere and has a few problems.
But, free ebooks rock!
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If it's free, my kid will find it. ahahahahah
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Exactly. Unless you want new books then the freebies are usually ok.
Other stuff you can find on torrent sites.
Any more ebook sources you people use?
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www.free-ebooks.net
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Yay Kindle just arrived by courier akakakakak bhbhbhbhbh axaxaxaxax
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Mae,
Thanks for another great clue!
I will add it to my list.
Grats! bfbfbfbfbf
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I bought a Kindle before coming to China. I have to say that now I have it I couldn't live without it! Such a great way to pass the time. A couple of months ago I started reading the Harry Potter series (again) and I am now on the sixth book akakakakak
I would definately recommend purchasing one if you are a lover of reading!
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I manage to get through life without an ereader or iphone. If I had a lot of money I would most probably donate it to all the poor girls, standing alone and cold in the street, before I got around to buying the latest technology.
For all that I get to do a lot of reading using my old-fashioned laptop. Up to now I have downloaded in PDF format but yesterday I downloaded Adobe Digital Reader which may, or may not, let me read books in EPUB format. If not I will try another programme.
While many free books are rather old that is not a problem to me. I have just finished reading the autobiography of Lady Susan Townley, who travelled around the world at the turn of the 20th Cent, and found it fascinating. Many modern books are available, but you do have to hunt to find them.
So far I have found Google Books to be the best source for books. I just select the "Full View" option and then hunt around. It has a lot of good features, including being able to bookmark, so I think it is worth a look.
There are many sites with free books so it is best to Google something like, 'free books + epub' and start exploring.
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Kindles aren't actually all that expensive. I think the most basic Kindle they have out right now costs $79 brand new and the most expensive one is close to $200 -- and that's with all the bells and whistles. I'm going to bite the bullet and get myself one as a Christmas present. :)
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I've used:
archive.org (over 2.5 million free ebooks)
openlibrary.org (over 1 milllion free titles)
gutenberg.org (over 30,000 free titles)
manybooks.net (over 26,000 free titles)
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Kindles aren't actually all that expensive. I think the most basic Kindle they have out right now costs $79 brand new and the most expensive one is close to $200 -- and that's with all the bells and whistles. I'm going to bite the bullet and get myself one as a Christmas present. :)
I would absolutely recommend it. I got the bog standard one.
I tried to read books on my laptop and even though you can get most books on a laptop (for free) after a very short amount of time it really really hurt my eyes. For the amount of money a kindle costs it's definately worth it merely for the health of the eyeballs ahahahahah
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Kindles aren't actually all that expensive. I think the most basic Kindle they have out right now costs $79 brand new and the most expensive one is close to $200 -- and that's with all the bells and whistles. I'm going to bite the bullet and get myself one as a Christmas present. :)
I would absolutely recommend it. I got the bog standard one.
I tried to read books on my laptop and even though you can get most books on a laptop (for free) after a very short amount of time it really really hurt my eyes. For the amount of money a kindle costs it's definately worth it merely for the health of the eyeballs ahahahahah
I would also add a hearty recommendation. The eye soreness is a big thing for me, as I tend to read about 2 books a week and I have no problem with the kindle. Plus as a traveler it is a godsend because before I used to weigh down my bags just to suueze enough reading material in for a month long trip or so. Now I just pop my kindle in my bag and I'm good to go. (I was actually able to downside my bag due entirely because of the kindle.)
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I really don't know how I'd survive in China without my Kindle, reading really is an essential part of my life and if I'd have had to bring reading material here with me I really don't think there would have been much space in my suitcase for clothes.
However with a kindle I have a piece of equipment that easily slots into my laptop bag and I have about 5k e-books downloaded onto my laptop ready as and when I need them.
I know a few good sites for downloading e-books, however these are the same sites where I download my TV progs, movies and music, so I'm not entirely sure how OK Raoul would be with those links being posted on the forum, so if anyone needs pointing in the right direction please feel free to PM me.
SpV
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I have the one with 3g and wifi and keyboard. I have over 50 books on it now and more to come. I read about 4 or 5 books a week so it does save my eyes from computer wear-out. Still lots of room for more on it. And I have Kindle for pc so can copy back and forth if I need to. Thanks to multi Terrabyte hard drives
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Check out ........
http://www.ebook3000.com/
it also has some 'interesting' magazines afafafafaf
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I can't recommend the kindle enough (or any e-reader for that matter), espcecially living in a city that is not Beijing or Shanghai (which have proper English book stores or places like The Bookworm).
I have read more books on my kindle in 8 months than I have paper books in the last 3 years.
Not to mention after the initial investment on the machine itself, the books are virtually free and only a click away (puns intended).
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So since my Kindle is coming over with my brother for the holidays I've been looking into how to get more books onto the thing and found this great Taobao store: http://enbook.taobao.com/
They sell all $1-$100 books on Amazon for 8rmb apiece. They also do subscriptions to newspapers and magazines. They'll let you try out the service on one less than $20 book for 3rmb. I just did it and it works great. I am going to save so much money on books because of this thing, right now I easily spend 500rmb a month minimum.
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They send them through e-mail as a .rar file which unzips into a mobi file. So, to be safe, just use a dummy e-mail account to recieve them. They have hundreds of positive reviews on Taobao so it seems like no one has run into any real problems yet.
I really have no idea how they do it, but you can also get books from amazon.uk and amazon.de and they will send you the exact book you request from the link you send so it would imagine they somehow have access to the actual ebooks rather than just having a massive database of pirated books. This is China so there's certain to be something sketchy about the whole set up but you really can't beat that price.
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I have Kindle and I like the fact that many of the books I use for historical research are free and if I do need to pay most cost less than a dollar.