Night and Day - by Virginia Woolf

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

English writer Virginia Woolf is one of the most important writers of her generation.   She is by no means forgotten and all of her books are read and studied and some have been adapted for other media.  Woolf still speaks to us.  However, only her early books are out of copyright and free for Kindle.

Let's take a look at Night and Day, a 1919 novel. (US Edition)  (UK Edition) 

It was a Sunday evening in October, and in common with many other young ladies of her class, Katharine Hilbery was pouring out tea. Perhaps a fifth part of her mind was thus occupied, and the remaining parts leapt over the little barrier of day which interposed between Monday morning and this rather subdued moment, and played with the things one does voluntarily and normally in the daylight.

Women have always multi-tasked!

. . . Katharine was committed to giving her parents an account of her visit to the Suffrage office. 

"They have an office at the top of one of the old houses in Russell Square. I never saw such queer-looking people. And the man discovered I was related to the poet, and talked to me about poetry. Even Mary Datchet seems different in that atmosphere." 

"Yes, the office atmosphere is very bad for the soul," said Mr. Hilbery.

Sad to think there was a time when Virginia Woolf was not allowed to vote . . . Actually women in the States could not vote at the time my mother was born and I also find it odd to think her strong-willed mother not being allowed to vote.  My mother is 97 and has never missed her chance to vote.  And neither have I.  We remember.  So pick up this book and read about a time when some of us could not take voting for granted . . .

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 mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle!

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

Travels in Arabia - by Johann Ludwig Burckhardt

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

This travel book seems to have several title variations, but I am settling on Travels in Arabia; comprehending an account of those territories in Hedjaz which the Mohammedans regard as sacred. (US Edition)  (UK Edition)   

It is by a Swiss adventurer named Johann Ludwig Burckhardt who knew Arabic and traveled disguised as an Arab.  (He should not be confused with English writer Charles Montagu Doughty who wrote a travel book with a similar title.)  This is a book put together from Burckhardt's letters and papers home and published posthumously in 1829. Now armchair traveler, you can rediscover it!

Here is a caveat.  You have to page through tedious notes on the assembling and publication of the book before you finally come to the book.  Then you will find the original page numbers are inserted in brackets for some reason beyond my understanding and each time that causes a paragraph to appear even in the middle of a sentence!  You will notice that in the excerpt below.  It is OK, you get used to it . . .

The price of every thing had risen here to an unusual height, the imports from the interior of Arabia having entirely ceased, while the whole population of the Hedjaz, now increased by a Turkish army and its numerous followers, and a host of pilgrims who were daily coming in, wholly depended for its supply upon the imports from Egypt. My little stock of money was therefore spent during my illness, and before I was sufficiently recovered to walk out. The Greek captain, though he had shown himself ready to afford me the common services of humanity, was not disposed to trust to the

[p.3] honour or respectability of a man whom he knew to be entirely destitute of money.

This privation causes him to sell his slave and travel in the guise of a "reduced Egyptian gentleman."

He went on the Hadj and there is some question as to whether he converted to Islam.

I have heard people exclaim in the mosques at Mekka, immediately after prayers, “O brethren, O faithful, hear me! I ask twenty dollars from God, to pay for my passage home; twenty dollars only. You know that God is all- bountiful, and may send me a hundred dollars; but it is twenty dollars only that I ask. Remember that charity is the sure road to paradise.” There can be no doubt that this practice is sometimes attended with success.

Quite a find, such an early travelers tale from an area much in the news today.  Any understanding we can gather of people elsewhere helps us understand our own selves better.  I have turned on the television and heard preachers instructing their electronic flock to pray exactly as is quoted above.

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

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