Free Literary Books for the Kindle (US & UK): 2014

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Mr. Midshipman Easy - by Frederick Marryat

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

You can’t get Horatio Hornblower for free on Amazon, but you may enjoy Mr. Midshipman Easy by Frederick Marryat (US Edition) (UK Edition) who joined the British Royal Navy himself in 1806. He wrote a number of novels of which this is one. It is said to be semi-autobiographical, but I think exaggeration rules the day and the book is a delight!

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. (It is one of the top 100 blogs on Amazon.)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

Here is a video of my late mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle! She appreciated how the large print helped her read despite macular degeneration and the Kindle is not as heavy as a book. Mother passed away peacefully at 99. She packed her Kindle and had it with her during her final hospital stay.

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. You may e-mail me at marilyn@marilynlitt.com

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Pride and Prejudice

No, I am not going to quote the famous first line. You will just have to download a free Kindle edition and read it yourself. But of course I expect you will be re-reading this wonderful novel by Jane Austen (US Edition) (UK 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 . . .

It is increasingly difficult to do this blog. It is very hard to find a free classic book and when I do, it is usually not available in the UK, so I have to start over. Take a look at this listmania list of free classic books. I don't know when the list was created, but every one of these 27 books is no longer available.

It is my belief that people who have created inexpensive versions of the classics are tagging the free versions for copyright violations. The tag is bogus, but it serves to remove a free edition and creates a market for the cheapest edition. Amazon does not have time to review all of these tagged books and we are paying for that.

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. (It is one of the top 100 blogs on Amazon.)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

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle! (She is now 99 and appreciates how the large print helps her read despite macular degeneration.)

Friday, August 29, 2014

Around the World in 80 Days - Jules Verne

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

The 1873 novel, Around the World in 80 Days, by French author Jules Verne has been made into a couple of big budget films. They are quite entertaining, but perhaps eclipse the book. This is a neat little band box of a book. It is an entertaining story that would make good vacation reading. (US Edition) (UK Edition)

It is hard to argue that a book whose title everyone knows is forgotten, but this is a superior work of fiction that still entertains and was famous long before there were movies.

A US Amazon Reader Reviewer agrees with me!

"I can't believe that a 130+ year old book translated to English was good enough to keep me up half the night but this brilliant old gem did."

The protagonist (Phileas Fogg) hires a new manservant (Passepartout):

Hearing that Mr. Phileas Fogg was looking for a servant, and that his life was one of unbroken regularity, that he neither travelled nor stayed from home overnight, he felt sure that this would be the place he was after.

Yes, a rude awakening is coming - as foreshadowed by the title!

"Passepartout!" repeated Mr. Fogg, without raising his voice.

Passepartout made his appearance.

"I've called you twice," observed his master.

"But it is not midnight," responded the other, showing his watch.

"I know it; I don't blame you. We start for Dover and Calais in ten minutes."

A puzzled grin overspread Passepartout's round face; clearly he had not comprehended his master.

"Monsieur is going to leave home?"

"Yes," returned Phileas Fogg. "We are going round the world."

Passepartout opened wide his eyes, raised his eyebrows, held up his hands, and seemed about to collapse, so overcome was he with stupefied astonishment.

The reviewer is right, this book is a gem and I do not say that lightly.

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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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

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle! (She is now 98 and appreciates how the large print helps her read despite macular degeneration.)

Sunday, July 20, 2014

The Nerve of Foley and Other Railroad Stories - Frank Hamilton Spearman

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

I was actually looking for some railroad non-fiction which I read in the 1970's. It was a collection of short accounts of railroad tragedies and tragedies averted by heroic children who flagged down trains. That will have to wait for another day.

Today's offering by American writer Frank Hamilton Spearman is fiction, from 1900. (US Edition) (UK Edition)

The Five-Nine skimmed across the meadows without a break, and pulled up a hundred feet from the burning bridge. It was an old Howe truss, and snapped like popcorn as the flames bit into the rotten shed.

Pat Francis and his brakeman ran forward. Across the river they could see half a dozen section-men chasing wildly about throwing impotent buckets of water on the burning truss.

"We're up against it, Georgie," cried Francis. "Not if we can get across before the bridge tumbles into the river," returned Sinclair.

"You don't mean you'd try it?"

"Would I? Wouldn't I? You know the orders. That bridge is good for an hour yet. Pat, if you're game, I'll run it."

This is a collection of short stories.

The author was a banker, but clearly new his railroads. If you are looking for something lost to time, look no further than the steam train.

his 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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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

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle! (She is now 98 and appreciates how the large print helps her read despite macular degeneration.)

Monday, May 26, 2014

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nature

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

"OUR age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, American, author of the essay, Nature. (US Edition) (UK Edition)

This was written in 1836. It is difficult to imagine a time when our view was through the eyes of those who went before. We seem to be pressing ever forward. We only look back in nostalgia for those things that brought us pleasure in the past, never for instruction. I speak generally, but I cannot think of a time since Emerson when the present was absorbed in the past. I think this lack of interest is accelerating. Today the price of antiques is falling because they are not in fashion anymore. I tutor school children who only learn history in the classroom. It is not learned from the media or their families.

What would Emerson have thought if he knew we were picking up his essay now to see nature as seen through his eyes?

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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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

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle! (She is now 98 and appreciates how the large print helps her read despite macular degeneration.)

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

After London or Wild England by Richard Jefferies

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

Dystopian books about a post-apocalyptic future also are a part of our past. Follow that? English writer, Richard Jefferies, wrote his entry in this genre, After London or Wild England, in 1885. (US Edition) (UK Edition)

He was primarily a nature writer and this is apparent in his story:

"The old men say their fathers told them that soon after the fields were left to themselves a change began to be visible. It became green everywhere in the first spring, after London ended, so that all the country looked alike."

The book's form will not be particularly familiar to the readers of Young Adult trilogies. It takes the form of a journal or history by someone living after the apocalypse and trying to explain the present and relate it to the past.

"Indeed, we have fuller knowledge of those extremely ancient times than of the people who immediately preceded us, and the Romans and the Greeks are more familiar to us than the men who rode in the iron chariots and mounted to the skies. The reason why so many arts and sciences were lost was because, as I have previously said, the most of those who were left in the country were ignorant, rude, and unlettered. They had seen the iron chariots, but did not understand the method of their construction, and could not hand down the knowledge they did not themselves possess."

Apparently this history is to serve as background for the adventure tale that comprises the second part of the book:

"What was there behind the immense and untraversed belt of forest which extended to the south, to the east, and west? Where did the great Lake end? Were the stories of the gold and silver mines of Devon and Cornwall true? And where were the iron mines, from which the ancients drew their stores of metal?"

Come along and find out!

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.

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

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

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle! (She is now 98 and appreciates how the large print helps her read despite macular degeneration.)

Monday, March 3, 2014

A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

I like my history undistilled and that is hard to find. But in A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by English writer Isabella L. Bird comes close. (US Edition) (UK Edition) This is a book of edited letters by a world-class traveler. In 1892, she became the first woman inducted into the Royal Geographical Society. These letters were written 20 years before that honor.

The forest was thick, and had an undergrowth of dwarf spruce and brambles, but as the horse had become fidgety and "scary" on the track, I turned off in the idea of taking a short cut, and was sitting carelessly, shortening my stirrup, when a great, dark, hairy beast rose, crashing and snorting, out of the tangle just in front of me. I had only a glimpse of him, and thought that my imagination had magnified a wild boar, but it was a bear. The horse snorted and plunged violently, as if he would go down to the river, and then turned, still plunging, up a steep bank, when, finding that I must come off, I threw myself off on the right side, where the ground rose considerably, so that I had not far to fall. I got up covered with dust, but neither shaken nor bruised. It was truly grotesque and humiliating. The bear ran in one direction, and the horse in another.

She sounds like the perfect traveling companion, game for anything and not too full of herself.

At one point she is staying in a cabin with an unexpected and unwanted companion who does no work, causes catastrophes and eats more than his share. Worse, he fancies himself a writer:

In one there are twenty lines copied (as Mr. Kavan has shown me) without alteration from Paradise Lost; in another there are two stanzas from Resignation, with only the alteration of "stray" for "dead"; and he has passed the whole of Bonar's Meeting-place off as his own.

She gets some small satisfaction after he starts raiding the pantry and stealing food.

Before the boy came I had mistaken some faded cayenne pepper for ginger, and had made a cake with it. Last evening I put half of it into the cupboard and left the door open. During the night we heard a commotion in the kitchen and much choking, coughing, and groaning, and at breakfast the boy was unable to swallow food with his usual ravenousness.

The "boy" is a former theological student.

We wish we could visit this wilderness she loved. It is past recovery. At one point she writes of the "slightly musical ring of the lumberer's axe." If she could visit today, she might recall the sound as something less lyrical.

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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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

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle! (She is now 98 and appreciates how the large print helps her read despite macular degeneration.)

Monday, January 27, 2014

"Self Help; with illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance" by Samuel Smiles

"Self Help; with illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance" is a very early self help book by Scottish writer, Samuel Smiles. (US Edition) (UK Edition)

The book may have been written in 1859, but most readers will find it familiar:

“Heaven helps those who help themselves” is a well-tried maxim, embodying in a small compass the results of vast human experience. The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.

I never use to credit self-help, but with the passing of the years, I no longer see it as foolish to give yourself pep talks. They don't replace action, but you have to tell yourself something and why not have a supportive inner self?

Wait, I am not writing a self help book . . .

Admiral Hobson, who broke the boom at Vigo in 1702, . . . was working as a tailor’s apprentice near Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, when the news flew through the village that a squadron of men-of-war was sailing off the island. He sprang from the shopboard, and ran down with his comrades to the beach, to gaze upon the glorious sight. The boy was suddenly inflamed with the ambition to be a sailor; and springing into a boat, he rowed off to the squadron, gained the admiral’s ship, and was accepted as a volunteer. Years after, he returned to his native village full of honours, and dined off bacon and eggs in the cottage where he had worked as an apprentice.

But the greatest tailor of all is unquestionably Andrew Johnson, the present President of the United States—a man of extraordinary force of character and vigour of intellect. In his great speech at Washington, when describing himself as having begun his political career as an alderman, and run through all the branches of the legislature, a voice in the crowd cried, “From a tailor up.” It was characteristic of Johnson to take the intended sarcasm in good part, and even to turn it to account. “Some gentleman says I have been a tailor. That does not disconcert me in the least; for when I was a tailor I had the reputation of being a good one, and making close fits; I was always punctual with my customers, and always did good work.”

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.

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

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

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle! (She is now 98 and appreciates how the large print helps her read despite macular degeneration.)