Authored by Johnny Dunn in Comics and Literature
Published on 03-22-2009
Books are the gateway to knowledge, if you didn’t already know. Sure, real books cost money and it’s a lot easier to obtain information over the internet, but sometimes you can’t beat good old-fashioned literature. But maybe there is a way to combine the two.
In fact, there are many distinct and various advantages that reading books online or e-books offer. You don’t have to buy the books which saves you a lot of money, especially during the current recession. You also don’t have to kill any trees that would normally be chopped down if you had the book in real life. It’s also a lot easier to read books on your computer; a hundred books on your computer may take up a few megabytes of space, while a hundred books in real life can fill up an entire room.
There are tons of resources and different places where you can find, read, and research books that are in print right now on the web. Here are just a few.
1. Gutenberg
Definitely the most famous and probably the most used resource, Gutenberg has a very suitable name. There are over 27,000 free books in their catalog and you don’t have to pay or sign up or do any work at all besides left click. You can view all the books in Gutenberg’s own built-in web application that makes reading online a cinch.
2. Online Books Page
The site is true to its name, it really is like an online library. With over 35,000 free books in its database, this makes Online Books one of the largest if not the largest source of free online books. Easy to use and easy to search, Online Books has one of the most friendly user interfaces. I recommend this if you’re just breaking into reading books online.
3. Classic Book Shelf
This is a great site with a large database of books widely considered to be classics. But an even better feature of the site is its application for viewing books. Though you do have to install the plug-in, it truly is worth it. The sheer versatility and customization of the application makes it one of the easiest ways to read books online and is definitely recommended for first-timers. Even people who are really against electronic reading due to the difficulty when compared to reading actual print on a page will have to grudgingly like this site.
4. Free Ebooks
This site really is crazy. Just take a look at it and browse its content. It offers many, many links to different resources of e-books and clear, concise descriptions for them all. Are you having a hard time finding the book you want, or maybe you’re a bookaholic and are looking to collect all the resources of the web in order to build your very own huge library? Then this is the site for you.
With this list, along with the immense amount of other free online book resources, who needs the library?
