A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - by James Joyce

I love this book.  It is a very readable story about an Irish boy and his Catholic upbringing.  It is a semi-autobiographical novel of Joyce's own childhood.  But it was not novelistic enough for some of his family who wished to disown him.

Here is a taste:

"On each of the seven days of the week he further prayed that one of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost might descend upon his soul and drive out of it day by day the seven deadly sins which had defiled it in the past; and he prayed for each gift on its appointed day, confident that it would descend upon him, though it seemed strange to him at times that wisdom and understanding and knowledge were so distinct in their nature that each should be prayed for apart from the others."

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is to Ulysses, what The Hobbit is to The Lord of the Rings. (£2.10 UK edition)  (EUR 2,38 Deutsch edition)

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

The Century Vocabulary Builder - by Garland Greever

What a great idea! Build a vocabulary for the century! OK, it is not this century.

Hmmm, it is not the last century either . .

But they had the right idea in 1883:

The Century Vocabulary Builder    (No UK or DE edition)

The book is not about grammar, usage or spelling. It is not for scholars. It is for people who would like to improve their vocabulary and their ability to speak plainly. The book does not give you word lists, but does have exercises. Give it a shot in 2011! (A touch of slang, judiciously used, can be effective.)

An easy way to page through a blog is to go to the bottom of the page of a blog and click on "View Articles List."  This will give you a page that lists a line or two from 4 blog entries. That is especially useful with this blog if you are looking for a blog entry on a particular book.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Remembrance of Things Past (Swann's Way) - by Marcel Proust

2011 may be the year to move reading Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust (also titled À la recherche du temps perdu - In Search of Lost Time) from your "to do" list to your Kindle.

If you have never read Remembrance of Things Past, you need to download the first book in the heptalogy, which is Swann's Way.  (US Edition)  (UK Edition)  However, the free versions on Kindle are corrupted. Punctuation is screwed up and diacritical marks appear as the wrong characters. For example: Fran?ois instead of Françoise.  [ed.- Please note, this has been corrected as of 2012 and the free US version is now good, despite the reviews of the previous corrupt free version.  I would guess the UK version is also fixed.]

Also, pay no attention to the one star rating because it is due to this not being the most recent translation. Of course it is not, because the new translation by Lydia Davis is still in copyright and is more expensive. The free and inexpensive versions are the first translation by Scott Moncrieff.

Moncrief's version is fine if you are a first time reader of Proust. This is an absolutely wonderful translation of a wonderful book. Later translations are for returning readers interested in reading different versions. This translation of "Swann's Way" was published before Proust's death.

I will leave you with a quote highlighted by some Kindle readers:

"in my cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them"

NOTE! While doing this blog I solved one mystery and uncovered another. Proust's opus was translated again recently by 6 authors and is now in 6 volumes called The Penguin Proust. The first volume, retitled The Way by Swann's (UK title), was translated by Lydia Davis and there appeared to be no US Kindle version - although there are paperbacks and hardbacks with that title. However, I found it under the title Swann's Way but not credited to Lydia Davis. You may buy it here. (That is the US title for her translation.) Skeptics can download the free sample, where they will find Ms. Davis' forward. (Apparently Amazon read the comment I sent them and they corrected the cover and have now credited Ms. Davis with the translation.)  (Deutsch edition)

Now the mystery . . . The Kilmartin correction of Moncrieff's translation, as amended by Enright is in six volumes. I believe I have identified Volumes 2-6 for the Kindle -- but I cannot find Volume 1!   [ed. This has been corrected and Volume 1 has now been added! (UK edition)]

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Alice Adams - by Booth Tarkington

Booth Tarkington must be one of the best of a pack of forgotten writers. He won one of his two Pulitzers for the novel I am reviewing.

One of my favorite books is Tarkington's Alice Adams. (UK edition) (Deutsch edition) She is a very sympathetic heroine and I put her right up there with Jane Austen's Lizzy.

Here is a taste. Alice goes to a party with her brother - who soon ditches her. She is left to pretend that she is waiting for her date. The book was published in 1921, but as Tarkington writes about people, not so much plot or place, this book is timeless.

She had now to practice an art that affords but a limited variety of methods, even to the expert: the art of seeming to have an escort or partner when there is none. The practitioner must imply, merely by expression and attitude, that the supposed companion has left her for only a few moments, that she herself has sent him upon an errand; and, if possible, the minds of observers must be directed toward a conclusion that this errand of her devising is an amusing one; at all events, she is alone temporarily and of choice, not deserted. She awaits a devoted man who may return at any instant.


Other people desired to sit in Alice's nook, but discovered her in occupancy. She had moved the vacant chair closer to her own, and she sat with her arm extended so that her hand, holding her lace kerchief, rested upon the back of this second chair, claiming it. Such a preemption, like that of a traveller's bag in the rack, was unquestionable; and, for additional evidence, sitting with her knees crossed, she kept one foot continuously moving a little, in cadence with the other, which tapped the floor. Moreover, she added a fine detail: her half-smile, with the under lip caught, seemed to struggle against repression, as if she found the service engaging her absent companion even more amusing than she would let him see when he returned: there was jovial intrigue of some sort afoot, evidently. Her eyes, beaming with secret fun, were averted from intruders, but sometimes, when couples approached, seeking possession of the nook, her thoughts about the absentee appeared to threaten her with outright laughter; and though one or two girls looked at her skeptically, as they turned away, their escorts felt no such doubts, and merely wondered what importantly funny affair Alice Adams was engaged in. She had learned to do it perfectly.

This review snippet amused me:

"My only negative thought about this book is that some characters especially the mother, repeated things a lot. The mother had several lines that she said at least 5 times throughout the book, and that was somewhat annoying. "

Obviously Booth Tarkington knows a thing or two about Mothers!

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Mr. Midshipman Easy - by Frederick Marryat

When the Kindle was released in the UK, I was excited. I was going to buy a Kindle just so I get UK titles. About once a year I buy paperbacks from Amazon UK and the postage cost as much as the book. There are some books sold only in the UK and they are great reading if you an Anglophile. In particular I like the travel literature which are books by extreme travelers - such as someone who would ride a motorcycle across the Sahara by himself. So being able to buy those books on Kindle would have been great!

Unfortunately, there are Byzantine rules preventing someone in the US from buying UK titles. First your Kindle must be dedicated to one country or the other. You can buy from Amazon US or Amazon UK, but not both. (If you move, you can switch your Kindle.) You select one country or the other, but you have to have residency - which is proved by having a credit card billed to you in the country of residency.

One reason for this is some UK Amazon Kindle books are cheaper than US Kindle editions of the same book. So maybe there was a fear that people would register in the UK to save on bestsellers. Somehow I doubt it - but what an irony. The new medium, the Kindle with its E-ink, can't cross borders like an old fashioned hardback can! WHAT A SHAME . . .

Here is an example of the fallout. C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower is not available for the Kindle in the states. You can get the books in the UK though. Here is a collection of Hornblower books for UK users ONLY.

I think this might be because Hornblower came later to the States and perhaps is still in copyright. Or maybe it is just some foolish decision by someone at Amazon who thinks Americans don't want to read about the Royal Navy under sail. I have read a couple of the Hornblower books and enjoyed them, but won't be getting them free on my Kindle.

I have to content myself with Mr. Midshipman Easy by Frederick Marryat (UK edition) (Deutsch edition) who joined the Royal Navy himself in 1806. He wrote a number of novels of which this is one. One Amazon review says:

Captain Marryat's books have been difficult to find until now, and I'm overjoyed to find so many on kindle. I thought this book was great, very funny and understated, even if it's a couple hundred years old it seems perfectly relevant today.

Here is a sample:

"As Mr Sawbridge, the first lieutenant, happened to be going on shore on the same evening for the last time previous to the ship's sailing, he looked into the Blue Posts, George, and Fountain Inns, to inquire if there was such a person arrived as Mr Easy.

"O yes," replied the waiter at the Fountain,—"Mr Easy has been here these three weeks."

"The devil he has," roared Mr Sawbridge, with all the indignation of a first lieutenant defrauded three weeks of a midshipman; "where is he; in the coffee-room?"

"Oh dear no, sir," replied the waiter, "Mr Easy has the front apartments on the first floor."

"Well, then, show me up to the first floor."

"May I request the pleasure of your name, sir?" said the waiter.

"First lieutenants don't send up their names to midshipmen," replied Mr Sawbridge; "he shall soon know who I am."

At this reply, the waiter walked upstairs, followed by Mr Sawbridge, and threw open the door.

"A gentleman wishes to see you, sir," said the waiter.

"Desire him to walk in," said Jack: "and, waiter, mind that the punch is a little better than it was yesterday; I have asked two more gentlemen to dine here."

In the meantime, Mr Sawbridge, who was not in his uniform, had entered, and perceived Jack alone, with the dinner table laid out in the best style for eight, a considerable show of plate for even the Fountain Inn, and everything, as well as the apartment itself, according to Mr Sawbridge's opinion, much more fit for a commander-in-chief than a midshipman of a sloop of war."

Shiver me timbers!

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Secret Adversary - by Agatha Christie

Here is my holiday gift to you, an Agatha Christie mystery, Secret Adversary. (£3.99 UK edition) (EUR 2,01 Deutsch edition -note cover is incorrect) Once again, we see the price discrepancy between the various Kindle stores.  This book is free in the US and pricey in the UK.

This is one of the "Tommy & Tuppence" series - actually it is the first book. The characters full names are Thomas Beresford and Prudence Cowley.

Carshalton Terrace proved to be an unimpeachable row of what Tuppence called "ladylike looking houses." They rang the bell at No. 27, and a neat maid answered the door. She looked so respectable that Tuppence's heart sank. Upon Tommy's request for Mr. Carter, she showed them into a small study on the ground floor where she left them. Hardly a minute elapsed, however, before the door opened, and a tall man with a lean hawklike face and a tired manner entered the room.

"Mr. Y. A.?" he said, and smiled. His smile was distinctly attractive. "Do sit down, both of you."

They obeyed. He himself took a chair opposite to Tuppence and smiled at her encouragingly. There was something in the quality of his smile that made the girl's usual readiness desert her.

As he did not seem inclined to open the conversation, Tuppence was forced to begin.

"We wanted to know—that is, would you be so kind as to tell us anything you know about Jane Finn?"

"Jane Finn? Ah!" Mr. Carter appeared to reflect. "Well, the question is, what do you know about her?"

Sounds "all Agatha" to me . . .

From the reviews on Amazon, fans of Christie's work will not be disappointed. So take a break from Poirot, Ms. Marple, and "The Chipmunk Song" and enjoy this "gift!"

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Riders of the Purple Sage - by Zane Grey

Zane Grey wrote dozens of Westerns. He is known for his descriptions of the physical beauty of the West. That may seem odd, but even if his descriptions are more adept than his plot, his novels are much loved. I went through a Zane Grey phase and while I am not passionate about his works I understand why an octogenarian friend reads them over and over. 

Her clear sight intensified the purple sage-slope as it rolled before her. Low swells of prairie-like ground sloped up to the west. Dark, lonely cedar-trees, few and far between, stood out strikingly, and at long distances ruins of red rocks. Farther on, up the gradual slope, rose a broken wall, a huge monument, looming dark purple and stretching its solitary, mystic way, a wavering line that faded in the north. Here to the westward was the light and color and beauty. Northward the slope descended to a dim line of canyons from which rose an up-Hinging of the earth, not mountainous, but a vast heave of purple uplands, with ribbed and fan-shaped walls, castle-crowned cliffs, and gray escarpments. Over it all crept the lengthening, waning afternoon shadows. 

By far his most popular work is .89 cent Riders of the Purple Sage (Free UK edition) (Free Deutsch edition). There are some free Zane Grey books, but none are the better known. 

I found an interesting quote about Grey's depression.

“A hyena lying in ambush—that is my black spell! I conquered one mood only to fall prey to the next…I wandered about like a lost soul or a man who was conscious of imminent death."

I had not known about his "hyena." Apparently, as with many writers, his characters are the ones who live happily ever after.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Right Ho, Jeeves - by P.G. Wodehouse

Yes, you should buy a Kindle so you can be introduced to Bertie Wooster (kept in line by his butler Jeeves) and Bertie's friends, such as the incomparable Gussie Fink-Nottle!

Learn why you should never combine public speaking with over consumption!

The course of true love never did run smooth and obviously the British do not know the cautionary tale of "speak for yourself John Alden." Find out firsthand from the parallel tale of that newt loving man-about-town, Gussie Fink-Nottle.

Of the many hysterical Jeeves & Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves (£4.70! UK edition) (5,89 Deutsch edition) is considered the most hilarious and falling down funny . . . by me . . . and others. Find out for yourself. Spend Christmas Day sequestered in a corner after dinner, chortling and guffawing. What better gift to yourself than a good read and a good laugh?  (Note how the US edition is free, but the UK and German versions are pricey!)

Here is a bit of Jeeves and Wooster patter from this novel, but it could have come from any of them.  It is a typical exchange that fans  have come to expect. Wait for it . . .

"Yes, Jeeves?" I said. "Something on your mind, Jeeves?"


"I fear that you inadvertently left Cannes in the possession of a coat belonging to some other gentleman, sir."


I switched on the steely a bit more.


"No, Jeeves," I said, in a level tone, "the object under advisement is mine. I bought it out there."


"You wore it, sir?"


"Every night."


"But surely you are not proposing to wear it in England, sir?"

 

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Howard's End - E. M. Forster

Howard's End is a house. (£0.70 UK edition) (Deutsch edition) You learn that on the first page.  

The book is about the house, but it is more about the personalities who inhabit the house and their ambition - in some cases the ambition to do good.

"He says the most horrid things about woman's suffrage so nicely, and when I said I believed in equality he just folded his arms and gave me such a setting down as I've never had. Meg, shall we ever learn to talk less? I never felt so ashamed of myself in my life. I couldn't point to a time when men had been equal, nor even to a time when the wish to be equal had made them happier in other ways. I couldn't say a word. I had just picked up the notion that equality is good from some book--probably from poetry, or you. Anyhow, it's been knocked into pieces, and, like all people who are really strong, Mr. Wilcox did it without hurting me."

"Howard's End," which I have read a couple of times and which is my favorite of Forster's several good books, is very cynical and very true to life. The realism is why the book still reads well today.

The 1992 movie by Merchant Ivory starred Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham Carter.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

A Christmas Carol - by Charles Dickens

I was going to do this blog on one of Dicken's lesser known novellas about Christmas, such as The Cricket on the Hearth (UK edition) (Deutsch edition), but I had to speak about A Christmas Carol (UK edition) (Deutsch edition). 

"It is required of every man, that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death."

And so it is I am compelled every December to take down this short book and read again how Scrooge's life was transformed in just one night.  It was truly an ultimate makeover from the man who begrudges coal for the fire to the man who giggles and flings money out the window for the purchase of a Christmas goose to be given away!

Go with Scrooge on his ghostly tour as he eavesdrops on his past, the present and even his own death.  It is one of the gifts of this book that it is not so much about the holiday as something larger.  The case is made for why Scrooge is the way he is, a product of choice, but also circumstance, and yet at an advanced age he totally remakes himself.

Dickens remade Christmas too.  In urging that Scrooge keep the day, it seems he spurred his readers to celebrate Christmas Day with a festive meal and family and friends and charity to strangers.  A Christmas Carol is not about exchanging gifts and shopping.  That seems to have been added later.  We could do worse that revisit Christmas Past.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

No, I am not going to quote the famous first line.  You will just have to download Pride and Prejudice and read it for yourself!  (Free UK edition)  (Free Deutsch edition)

I do not know how many times I have read this favorite of mine, first published in 1813.  It is always wonderful to realize how much we have in common with those who lived 200 years ago.  If we can laugh at the same things, how different can we be?  

There are few characters in literature as funny as Mr. Collins who fancies himself a skilled flatterer - adept at correcting any misstep. 

"The dinner too in its turn was highly admired; and [Mr. Collins] begged to know to which of his fair cousins the excellence of its cookery was owing. But here he was set right by Mrs. Bennet, who assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a good cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen. He begged pardon for having displeased her. In a softened tone she declared herself not at all offended; but he continued to apologise for about a quarter of an hour."

Mr. Collins brings me as much pleasure as he does Mr. Bennet!

So immerse yourself once again in the society of the Bennet girls with their interest in balls and the activities of the regiment.  And if you are reading this book for the first time, I envy you the pleasure of discovering one of the world's great novels.  Great because it is funny, surprising, romantic and up-to-date, all at the same time.

A reader in 1813 said:

I have finished the novel called Pride and Prejudice, which I think a very superior work. It depends not on any of the common resources of novel writers, no drownings, no conflagrations, nor runaway horses, nor lap-dogs and parrots, nor chambermaids and milliners, nor rencontres and disguises. I really think it is the most probable I have ever read.

Still probable after all these years . . . 

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Chapters from My Autobiography - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

I wrote about Huckleberry Finn in my first blog, so I promise this is not going to be the Mark Twain blog.  But I am fascinated that Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain is on the bestseller list.  His complete autobiography had a literary embargo so that it could not be published until one hundred years after his death.  He is now dishing the dirt from beyond the grave.

But if you want the expurgated version which was published and popular in his lifetime, you can get it for semi-free.

It is not the book titled Mark Twain's Burlesque Autobiography (UK edition) (Deutsch edition) which is free for the Kindle, but which you may not want to read.  Twain hated the book so much, he bought up the plates and destroyed them.  He anticipated much, but apparently not scanners.

You are looking for the 99 cent  Chapters from My Autobiography (Free UK edition) (Free Deutsch edition) by Samuel Clemens. But I think this is one of those times where you will want to pay full price.  Samuel Clemens was a very frank writer and wrote very bleakly about life and death in a way not designed to endear him to Tom Sawyer's many fans.  If he thought something was too incendiary to publish for a hundred years - well maybe that is what you want to read.  In which case you want the new bestseller Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1  (UK edition) (Deutsch edition) It is 700 plus pages, making it a good choice  to downsize on to Kindle or maybe the size will make you reach for the shorter 95 cent version listed above. Either way, how wonderful to have his wider works read once again. 

Here is an excerpt from Chapters from My Autobiography.  It should also be part of the new publication.

[Dictated in 1906] In those early days duelling suddenly became a fashion in the New Territory of Nevada, and by 1864 everybody was anxious to have a chance in the new sport, mainly for the reason that he was not able to thoroughly respect himself so long as he had not killed or crippled somebody in a duel or been killed or crippled in one himself.

At that time I had been serving as city editor on Mr. Goodman`s Virginia City "Enterprise" for a matter of two years. I was twenty-nine years old. I was ambitious in several ways, but I had entirely escaped the seductions of that particular craze. I had had no desire to fight a duel; I had no intention of provoking one. I did not feel respectable, but I got a certain amount of satisfaction out of feeling safe.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

US/UK Kindle Classic
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy

Incest . . . a psychopath . .. forced marriages . . . scheming over a corpse . . . what is not to like?  All War and Peace needs is a zombie to bring it up to date.  Thankfully this absorbing novel works just fine in the era it is set.  So get in your time machine and re-discover once again that people do not change.

The Kindle edition of War and Peace (.99 US Edition) (£0.70 UK edition) is translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. The Constance Garnett translation is purportedly online Amazon US a dozen times - but each one is mislabeled! (More on this below.) However, the Maude translation was authorized by Tolstoy and has stood the test of time, not falling into disfavor as sometimes happens with translations.

The US version does not have chapter titles, they are listed by number - so they are not descriptive.  I do not know what the Garnett version looks like.  You kind of take potluck with these free and inexpensive versions when it comes to niceties such as cover, chapter titles and preface.  Sometimes you are just flung right into reading.

I do not love this book but I like it.  Like Joyce's Ulysses, it is one of those books I had to start more than once before I could get into it.  I loved the account of the battle of Borodino.  (I like military history.)  I would not say anything to discourage anyone from reading this book, so my liking it should be seen as a failure on my part and I am sure you will love it.

Downloading it just now, I am now reading it again.  It is absorbing and funny and deserves to be known as a great book: 

"But Pierre now committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak to another who wished to get away."

The Kindle shows it strength with these long books, because you are not carrying around a heavy volume.  War and Peace could not be easily be read on public transport before the Kindle!

The first line of the Constance Garnett is

"Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family."

I have downloaded samples of every purported translation by Garnett and none are Garnett's translation. . .

Here is a really good guide on how to tell which translation you have.  It is by Amazon reviewer, Barney Duff, who toils in relative anonymity, but who has taken the trouble to help everyone interested in this topic.  For example (and this is just a taste):

MAUDE (1922):

 

"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes."

and later

"It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor..."

---------------

GARNETT (1904):

first paragraph:

"Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family. (1)"

"These words were uttered in July 1805 by Anna Pavlovna Scherer, a distinguished lady of the court,..."

If this is not enough, I would also point you to a nice piece by The Language Geek.  Page down to the middle of the page.  I am busy writing Amazon to tell them the Garnett translations are wrongly attributed, so perhaps this will be fixed and maybe when people see Garnett is not available, that will be corrected too!

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

A Beginner's Guide to Ordering

Well actually I am the beginner. I had a bit of trouble ordering the free books I blog about from my Kindle.  That is why I have not been blogging.  I was troubleshooting! There are two things that I did wrong and I hope to save you from those problems.

If you are on your Kindle, you have to log in to your Amazon account from your Kindle to buy books linked from a Kindle blog.  This is different from buying books from the menu item "Shop in the Kindle Store."   You are logging in to what Amazon calls "the experimental Kindle browser.

Use the arrow keys on the 5-way controller to move the hand icon to the link for the book you want from my blog (or any Kindle blog.)  Click on the link by pressing the button in the center of the controller.

If this is the first time you have done this, you need to log in.  Here is how to do that.  You will see the enlarging tool, an icon of a magnifying glass, in the center of a box.  Move the box around with the arrow keys on the 5-way controller.  You want the link for "Sign In" to be in the box. Select the enlarging tool by pressing the 5-way controller button. Use the arrow keys to move the hand icon to the sign in link and press the controller button.

Log in with your Amazon ID and password. I believe (and hope) that you stay logged in forever.

After logging in, you will have to return to the blog and again follow the link to the free book you want from Amazon.  Move the box to the right margin so you can click on the "Buy now with 1-Click" button."  (It says "buy" even when the book is free.)  Press the controller button. Your book should download!

I promised you two mistakes.  Here is the other one.  I did NOT see a buy button.  If you do not see the button, you have the graphics turned off.  I think I diabled images when I had a problem with the "New York Times" locking up the experimental browser.   Go to Menu/Browser Settings to enable graphics and then you will see the "Buy" button and you are on your way!

Please note that if you are a US resident, you may only use the US store - no matter where you might be traveling- and if you are a UK resident, you must use the UK store.

As a US resident and an Anglophile, I would love to register my Kindle to the UK store, but that would only be possible if I had a UK credit card sent to a UK address.  My UK bank account is not sufficient to meet the "residency" requirement.

If you move to another country, you may change which store your Kindle is registered too - but your Kindle may only be registered to use one store.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Fans of Sherlock Holmes may know there are four novels and five collections of short stories.  All are entertaining to the devotee of this most famous of detectives, but the most accessible and best introduction to Holmes is
 
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes   ( £0.70 UK edition) (Free Deutsch edition)

This is the collection with the Irene Adler story (for Sherlock Holmes she was always THE woman), "A Scandal in Bohemia," the always amusing, "The Red-Headed League" and my favorite, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band."  I don't want to give away the ending, just don't let science get in the way of a good read.

Here is a bit of CSI: Baker Street:

"The fish that you have tattooed immediately above your right wrist could only have been done in China. I have made a small study of tattoo marks and have even contributed to the literature of the subject. That trick of staining the fishes' scales of a delicate pink is quite peculiar to China. When, in addition, I see a Chinese coin hanging from your watch-chain, the matter becomes even more simple."


Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. "Well, I never!" said he. "I thought at first that you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it, after all."

I have linked the FREE Kindle edition above.  The caveat for the US version, (and there is always a caveat with free), is there is no list of story titles at the beginning of the book.  You just start right off with the first story.  The work-around is you search on the title to go directly to the story.  Of course you need to know the title to search on it, but many fans of this collection will remember the story titles, and if you are a first time reader - start at the beginning!

I assume everyone with an electronic reader is familiar with the computer term "work-around."  It means the extra thing you have to do to get something to work the way it was supposed to work in the first place.  For example, the work around for forgetting your house key is break the window.  If you can raise the window, that is an "elegant work-around."

If you are a fan of free classic Kindle literature, you must be tolerant.  As I go along with this blog, I will try and point out the best free or inexpensive versions of classic books for the Kindle.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.