Democracy in America - by Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America - Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville, what a dry name for such an interesting book! (US Edition)  (UK Edition) Written as a disquisition by this Frenchman on America’s great experiment with Democracy- it is read now for his observations of American life as he traveled to the Midwest at a time when few foreign visitors journeyed away from the East Coast..  He made his trip in 1831 and published the book in 1835.  

A caveat, the Table of Contents (TOC) is missing.  Now I don't care, because Kindle keeps my bookmark and I never read the TOC, because I want to be surprised, but some people want that enough to pay for it.  You should be able to find a copy with a linked TOC by downloading free samples from the various editions. The footnotes are interspersed with the text, which I prefer when reading an e-book.

de Tocqueville starts off by looking at French history:

In perusing the pages of our history, we shall scarcely meet with a single great event, in the lapse of seven hundred years, which has not turned to the advantage of equality. The Crusades and the wars of the English decimated the nobles and divided their possessions; the erection of communities introduced an element of democratic liberty into the bosom of feudal monarchy; the invention of fire-arms equalized the villein and the noble on the field of battle; printing opened the same resources to the minds of all classes; the post was organized so as to bring the same information to the door of the poor man's cottage and to the gate of the palace; and Protestantism proclaimed that all men are alike able to find the road to heaven.

Of course this could also be said of English history!

Then he turns to America.  It is precisely his travels through the backwoods of our country that make the book unusual.  Even today, people take his book as a guide and try to follow it in part and I believe someone recently wrote a travel memoir about trying to recreate his entire journey! (Help me with the title of that recent book, dear readers.)

Upon this inhospitable coast the first united efforts of human industry were made. The tongue of arid land was the cradle of those English colonies which were destined one day to become the United States of America. The centre of power still remains here; whilst in the backwoods the true elements of the great people to whom the future control of the continent belongs are gathering almost in secrecy together.

When he sees the great burial mounds of prehistoric Indians in the Midwest, of which little is known even now, he muses:

How strange does it appear that nations have existed, and afterwards so completely disappeared from the earth that the remembrance of their very names is effaced; their languages are lost; their glory is vanished like a sound without an echo; though perhaps there is not one which has not left behind it some tomb in memory of its passage! The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.

A good travel book not only takes you on an armchair journey, but opens you up to introspection.  He could never have known that almost 200 years later, we would travel with him back in time.

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Nicholas Nickleby - by Charles Dickens

Nicholas Nickleby; I love this Charles Dickens novel. (US Edition)  (UK Edition)  I read it immediately after seeing a multi-hour stage adaptation that introduced me to characters I will remember my whole life.  It may be that this novel was somewhat overlooked until that 1980 theatrical adaptation.

Amazon has added a new feature where they show Kindle readers favorite passages from a book.  They are from the highlighting feature on Kindle.  I actually found it annoying and turned it off, but I enjoy looking at the Amazon reviews and seeing the favorite quotes.  The US & UK Amazon sites show exactly the same quotes with the same counts – but the reviews are either US or UK, not commingled as the quotes are.

Here is one:  “Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.”  Sounds sort of Shakespearean.

And Dickens and Shakespeare have this in common; they knew people through and through.

'Well, ma'am,' said Ralph, impatiently, 'the creditors have administered, you tell me, and there's nothing left for you?'

'Nothing,' replied Mrs Nickleby.

'And you spent what little money you had, in coming all the way to London, to see what I could do for you?' pursued Ralph.

'I hoped,' faltered Mrs Nickleby, 'that you might have an opportunity of doing something for your brother's children. It was his dying wish that I should appeal to you in their behalf.'

'I don't know how it is,' muttered Ralph, walking up and down the room, 'but whenever a man dies without any property of his own, he always seems to think he has a right to dispose of other people's. What is your daughter fit for, ma'am?'

'Kate has been well educated,' sobbed Mrs Nickleby. 'Tell your uncle, my dear, how far you went in French and extras.'

The poor girl was about to murmur something, when her uncle stopped her, very unceremoniously.

'We must try and get you apprenticed at some boarding-school,' said Ralph. 'You have not been brought up too delicately for that, I hope?'

Here is a review of Nicholas Nickleby by a particularly intrepid Amazon reviewer who has done over a thousand reviews.  “  . .Dickens turns his sights toward the abuse of Yorkshire schools - a national disgrace - in which children were effectively abandoned for a fee. Neglect, physical abuse, malnourishment, cold, and ill health were endemic. This political attack becomes the setting for an expansive tale of the Nickleby family and their ongoing struggle against the evil of their uncle Ralph. The usual collection of sub-plots, comedy and Dickensian characters rounds out a lengthy but fulfilling read that nobody will be sorry they started.”

You will miss these characters when you close the book.  I should say you will miss these people that Dickens has introduced you to.

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. 

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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)

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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 Pilgrim’s Progress - by John Bunyan

The Pilgrim’s Progress is a Christian Allegory from 1678 by John Bunyan.  The book has never been out of print.  It cannot easily be dismissed as old and out of step, because Progress has had a big influence on many classics that came after.

The US edition offered here is Part I only.  (Part 2 is the journey by the Pilgrim’s wife.)  The Kindle version gets very good reviews.  The UK edition is all of Bunyan’s works.  There are no reviews and I cannot see it, so I hope it is a fair copy.

{11} In this plight, therefore, he went home and refrained himself as long as he could, that his wife and children should not perceive his distress; but he could not be silent long, because that his trouble increased. Wherefore at length he brake his mind to his wife and children; and thus he began to talk to them: O my dear wife, said he, and you the children of my bowels, I, your dear friend, am in myself undone by reason of a burden that lieth hard upon me; moreover, I am for certain informed that this our city will be burned with fire from heaven; in which fearful overthrow, both myself, with thee my wife, and you my sweet babes, shall miserably come to ruin, except (the which yet I see not) some way of escape can be found, whereby we may be delivered. At this his relations were sore amazed; not for that they believed that what he had said to them was true, but because they thought that some frenzy distemper had got into his head; therefore, it drawing towards night, and they hoping that sleep might settle his brains, with all haste they got him to bed. But the night was as troublesome to him as the day; wherefore, instead of sleeping, he spent it in sighs and tears. So, when the morning was come, they would know how he did. He told them, Worse and worse: he also set to talking to them again; but they began to be hardened. They also thought to drive away his distemper by harsh and surly carriages to him; sometimes they would deride, sometimes they would chide, and sometimes they would quite neglect him. Wherefore he began to retire himself to his chamber, to pray for and pity them, and also to condole his own misery; he would also walk solitarily in the fields, sometimes reading, and sometimes praying: and thus for some days he spent his time.

You readily get the idea.  He is going to set out on his famous quest and he will meet Vanity Fair and dodge the Slough of Despond.  

Thou hast met with something, as I perceive, already; for I see the dirt of the Slough of Despond is upon thee; but that slough is the beginning of the sorrows that do attend those that go on in that way. Hear me, I am older than thou; thou art like to meet with, in the way which thou goest, wearisomeness, painfulness, hunger, perils, nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, and, in a word, death, and what not!

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. 

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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)

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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 Three Musketeers - by Alexandre Dumas

The Three Musketeers is an 1844 novel  by Alexandre Dumas.  (US Edition)  (UK Edition)  

Only today I explained to a first-grader armed with a Lego rapier, who claimed to be “Puss in Boots” (of Shrek movie fame), that there were also three soldiers with swords called “The Three Musketeers.”  I was trying to inspire group play, not recommend reading material.  He was not impressed.  You have to know your audience and I was just his substitute teacher.

For this group, I do suggest the book that I enjoyed as a child, but now want to return to as an adult. If you have not read the book, you may think d'Artagnan was one of the three Musketeers of the title.  He was not, but makes his way to Paris to join them.  (They are like the Coldstream Guards.)

It was, then, into the midst of this tumult and disorder that our young man advanced with a beating heat, ranging his long rapier up his lanky leg, and keeping one hand on the edge of his cap, with that half-smile of the embarrassed a provincial who wishes to put on a good face. When he had passed one group he began to breathe more freely; but he could not help observing that they turned round to look at him, and for the first time in his life d'Artagnan, who had till that day entertained a very good opinion of himself, felt ridiculous. 

Arrived at the staircase, it was still worse. There were four Musketeers on the bottom steps, amusing themselves with the following exercise, while ten or twelve of their comrades waited upon the landing place to take their turn in the sport.

One of them, stationed upon the top stair, naked sword in hand, prevented, or at least endeavored to prevent, the three others from ascending. These three others fenced against him with their agile swords. 

D'Artagnan at first took these weapons for foils, and believed them to be buttoned; but he soon perceived by certain scratches that every weapon was pointed and sharpened, and that at each of these scratches not only the spectators, but even the actors themselves, laughed like so many madmen.

Alas, you have to be en garde against the free version of this classic.  I am unable to download the UK version, but as you can see from this short passage from the US version – it looks to be a great tale marred by editing errors and a poor translation.

I suggest instead The Three Musketeers (Annotated) (Page & Screen) Dana Hand (Editor)  ($0.99 US Edition)  (£0.86 UK Edition) The name may be unwieldy, but an Amazon reviewer (who may not be impartial) gives it high marks for editing.

"There are too many sloppy editions of e-books on Amazon, but this is definitely the best available: everything works, the layout is clear and handsome, and the easy-to-use study-discussion guide and various extras are by Princeton profs who obviously enjoy literature and movies both, and share that enthusiasm in a non condescending way. At first I could not believe I was getting all this for 99 cents, but then noticed that sales go to benefit America's libraries and literacy programs, a huge plus to my way of thinking."

"all for one, one for all!"

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. 

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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 Book of Remarkable Criminals - by Henry Brodribb Irving

A Book of Remarkable Criminals by Henry Brodribb Irving is a nice little find if you are a crime buff.  (US Edition)  (UK Edition) The criminals who are detailed are not familiar.  You won’t find Jack the Ripper here or any infamous criminals.  That is what makes the book a fun read.  It was all new to me.

Such as:

It is not often that the gaunt spectre of murder invades the cloistered calm of academic life. Yet such a strange and unwonted tragedy befell Harvard University in the year 1849, when John W. Webster, Professor of Chemistry, took the life of Dr. George Parkman, a distinguished citizen of Boston. The scene of the crime, the old Medical School, now a Dental Hospital, is still standing, or was when the present writer visited Boston in 1907.

And:

Jenny Amenaide Brecourt was born in Paris in the year 1837. Her father was a printer, her mother sold vegetables. The parents neglected the child, but a lady of title took pity on her, and when she was five years old adopted her. Even as a little girl she was haughty and imperious. At the age of eight she refused to play with another child on the ground of her companion's social inferiority. "The daughter of a Baroness," she said, "cannot play with the daughter of a wine-merchant." When she was eleven years old, her parents took her away from her protectress and sent her into the streets to sell gingerbread—a dangerous experience for a child of tender years.

Do you know either of those stories?  I didn’t!

The book may be old –written after 1907 but before 1919 – but that does not mean it can’t be creepy:

A man who worked for Holmes as a handy man at the castle stated to the police that in 1892 Holmes had given him a skeleton of a man to mount, and in January, 1893, showed him in the laboratory another male skeleton with some flesh still on it, which also he asked him to mount. As there was a set of surgical instruments in the laboratory and also a tank filled with a fluid preparation for removing flesh, the handy man thought that Holmes was engaged in some kind of surgical work.

The essay at the beginning has some footnotes in the text with a funky type, but the rest of the text seems to fine.

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 Lafayette Escadrille - by James R McConnell

Before the “Eagle Squadron” of WWII (Yanks in the RAF), there was The Lafayette Escadrille.  The Lafayette Escadrille was a French air unit with American aviators. 

I think you would find they are largely forgotten now.  Of course, they had a high rate of casualties as they were inventing air warfare as well as the plane.  Being young adventurous men in a high risk enterprise, volunteering before the US was at war with Germany, it is unlikely they had children and the unit was small in number - so they don't have a lot of descendents.

On Nov. 11 when we salute our veterans, it is also good to look back and try to learn about those who are not as well remembered.

One of the flyers, James R McConnell, wrote this short memoir, ”Flying for France,” in 1915. (US Edition)  (UK Edition)

"What's wrong now?" inquires one of the tenants of the tent. "Everything, or else I've gone nutty," is the indignant reply, delivered while disengaging a leg from its Teddy Bear trousering. "Why, I emptied my whole roller on a Boche this morning, point blank at not fifteen metres off. His machine gun quit firing and his propeller wasn't turning and yet the darn fool just hung up there as if he were tied to a cloud. Say, I was so sure I had him it made me sore--felt like running into him and yelling, 'Now, you fall, you bum!'"

The eyes of the poilus [French infantry soldiers] register surprise. Not a word of this dialogue, delivered in purest American, is intelligible to them. Why is an aviator in a French uniform speaking a foreign tongue, they mutually ask themselves. Finally one of them, a little chap in a uniform long since bleached of its horizon-blue colour by the mud of the firing line, whisperingly interrogates a mechanician as to the identity of these strange air folk.

 "But they are the Americans, my old one," the latter explains with noticeable condescension.

It is not all funny stories of course.  You get a picture of his war …

I've concluded the pleasantest part of flying is just after a good landing. Getting home after a sortie, we usually go into the rest tent, and talk over the morning's work. Then some of us lie down for a nap, while others play cards or read. After luncheon we go to the field again, and the man on guard gets his chance to eat. If the morning sortie has been an early one, we go up again about one o'clock in the afternoon. We are home again in two hours and after that two or three energetic pilots may make a third trip over the lines. The rest wait around ready to take the air if an enemy bombardment group ventures to visit our territory--as it has done more than once over Bar-le-Duc. False alarms are plentiful, and we spend many hours aloft squinting at an empty sky.

That is something you encounter in every war memoir, the easy waiting and edgy waiting, but lots of waiting.  This writer spares you the tedium, but you know you are hearing a true account of his war.

In making a turn too close the tips of their wings touched. The Nieuport turned downward, its wings folded, and it fell like a stone. The Sopwith fluttered a second or two, then its wings buckled and it dropped in the wake of the Nieuport. The two men in each of the planes were killed outright.

One note, the conversion of the text is fine, but the chapter headings are full of crazy characters.  It does not mar the reading.

So, here is to the Lafayette Escadrille and those young flyboys from long ago and all the men and women who have served. 

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.