Comments on: Arthur's Classic Novels, his Love of Mankind and the Internet

Arthur's Classic Novels, his Love of Mankind and the Internet

nickyskye — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:16:57 -0800

Arthur's Classic Novels has 4000 free ebooks, no registration, nicely organized by author and topics: great old Science Fiction magazines l plentiful online education with 650 books for doctors l a vast collection of famous novels l short stories l by women l Buddhist Scriptures, including The Buddhist Bible, a fave of Jack Kerouac l magazines online l stories by Robert Sheckley l The Autobiography of Charles Darwin l huge collection of fairy tales l philosophy l P. G. Wodehouse l vintage technology l Oscar Wilde l Mark Twain l Rudyard Kipling l George MacDonald l the Koran l a collection of eText resource links. About Arthur Wendover.

The Top Ten Novels of the Early Twentieth Century in America grouped according to year from 1900 to 1919 A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty The New York Subway: Its Construction and Equipment Antique Sci-Fi Far Away And Long Ago - A History Of My Early Life By W. H. Hudson Autobiography of a Yogi By Paramhansa Yogananda Antique Detective Stories The Adventure Of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Some Weird & Horror Tales Among the many books for children: Silver Pennies with lovely illustrations Frances Hodgson Burnett Novels Adventure and Mystery Boy's Own Tall Tales of Oz by L. Frank Baum Bonus: Arthur's photographs of the various ethnic neighborhoods and streets of Toronto

By: Ahab

Ahab — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:37:49 -0800

Fantastic! Thank you.

By: StickyCarpet

StickyCarpet — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:38:12 -0800

I could bookmark and not read each of those, but somehow it doesn't have the gravitas of collecting and not reading a wall of books.

By: doctor_negative

doctor_negative — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:39:36 -0800

I just got a Kindle yesterday, this is perfect thanks.

By: Kafkaesque

Kafkaesque — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:40:22 -0800

Lots of Lovecraft there. The Old Ones thank you for spreading the word!

By: glaucon

glaucon — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:41:21 -0800

This is so cool! Does anybody know how I can get these on my free Kindle App on my Droid?

By: Amanojaku

Amanojaku — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:46:24 -0800

Yeah, how is this legal, exactly?

By: Sticherbeast

Sticherbeast — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:47:53 -0800

Arthur Machen in the Weird&Horror link. Hell yes.

By: grizzled

grizzled — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:49:48 -0800

By: marginaliana

marginaliana — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:03:44 -0800

Ooooooooooh old sci fi.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:05:31 -0800

> It's legal. Uh, how do you know? Have you examined every piece of work on offer here and determined that? Sturgeon's More than Human, for example, is certainly not in the public domain. This strikes me as pretty fishy.

By: Amanojaku

Amanojaku — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:06:49 -0800

It's legal. Copyright does not last forever, and works of fiction eventually enter into the public domain. In addition, some authors who still own a copyright of their works, give consent for those works to be distributed for free on the internet. Yeah, I understand copyright doesn't last forever, but I can tell you for a fact that those Astounding magazines aren't PD yet, and that it's pretty unlikely the Zelazny, Andre Norton, Poul Anderson, and Larry Janifer estates, at the very least, gave permission. Hell, he has Fred Pohl up there, and he's not even dead yet. I think he ol' Arthur just put up whatever he wanted, some PD, some not, and he should probably be expecting letters from some lawyers in the near future.

By: circular

circular — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:07:20 -0800

OK, it's mostly Gutenberg e-texts, correct?

My favorite one of these recycling-ebooks sites is Manybooks, because it looks great, tons of formats are easily available, and there are user reviews to read if you dislike sorting through library stacks without any context except a title and genre.

By: Joe Beese

Joe Beese — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:14:36 -0800

Sturgeon's More than Human, for example, is certainly not in the public domain. This strikes me as pretty fishy. Good heavens. Does this mean the Internet is being used to infringe copyrights?

By: fings

fings — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:15:24 -0800

By: Amanojaku

Amanojaku — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:25:14 -0800

Project Gutenberg has some Fred Pohl, too. That's because stories published before 1964 had to have their copyrights renewed 28 years after publication, and many authors didn't bother or missed some stories. Yes, and I don't doubt that some of the stuff is fine. But Pohl wrote "The Siege of Eternity" in 1997. It's possible it was given away as an e-version for free at some point, but like I said: there's a lot of material there I'm pretty skeptical about.

By: Amanojaku

Amanojaku — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:34:41 -0800

For another example: as far as I know, only eleven of P. K. Dick's early works (all available on Project Guttenberg) are PD, but Arthur has thirty-two novels and story collections up. There's no way that's legit.

By: John Cohen

John Cohen — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:53:58 -0800

Cool. Glad to see all the philosophy. Too bad Kafka is in the philosophy section, though. Disturbing commentary about society 'n' government 'n' stuff =/= philosophy.

By: Katjusa Roquette

Katjusa Roquette — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:54:19 -0800

Wow thanks! I needed stuff to read!

By: John Cohen

John Cohen — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:02:40 -0800

Also, just a cosmetic point, but the organization is pretty sloppy. In the "philosophy" section, there's a subsection for "Arthur Schopenhauer," but then there's a Schopenhauer work under a catch-all section for "Various Writers" at the end. "Various Writers" also includes 5 books by William James -- there doesn't seem to be any reason why he didn't get his own section.

By: phliar

phliar — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:09:47 -0800

I looked through the P. G. Wodehouse list and everything on it looks pre-1923, i.e. not a copyright violation.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:12:40 -0800

I had no idea that The Metamorphosis was written by both Kafka and Nietzsche. Who says you can't learn something new from the Internet?

By: eyeballkid

eyeballkid — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:09:28 -0800

For the Kindle, I'm a huge fan of FeedBooks and the option to download an ebook format of your choosing.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:10:47 -0800

This is awesome, thanks!

By: languagehat

languagehat — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:12:46 -0800

Yeah, Nietzsche wrote, like, half the story, but he and Kafka had an argument about whether to specify the nature of the ungeheueren Ungeziefer (he was like "you gotta tell 'em what kind of bug it is, man!" and Kafka was like "who cares, dude, it's vermin!") and Kafka kicked him out of the band and Nietzsche went crazy and started embracing horses on the street... you can read all about it in my forthcoming tell-all book.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:15:57 -0800

And copyright: well, let's see. Speaking purely for the US here: anything before 1922 is public domain, because it doesn't come under the 1976 act (which came into force in 1978), right? After that, anything from before 1950 (I think) that didn't have its copyright re-registered. But, yeah – stuff from before 1922 is public domain at this point, no matter what. Like, for example, the 'great early American novels 1900-1919' ones. I haven't looked much at the rest of the site, though. Is there much stuff from after 1922?

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:17:39 -0800

Okay, yeah – they certainly have some infringing stuff there.

By: sammyo

sammyo — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:59:32 -0800

Off topic but cool, the PG SF books have illustrations!

By: mkim

mkim — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 19:10:52 -0800

This is great! Thank you.

By: jscalzi

jscalzi — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 19:16:21 -0800

koeselitz: "Okay, yeah – they certainly have some infringing stuff there." On it.

By: frodisaur

frodisaur — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:46:39 -0800

I know that I feel safer because the Fun Police are on the case!

By: Mael Oui

Mael Oui — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 23:08:48 -0800

It's YOU! You're the one who ALWAYS finds the good stuff online! Thank you for consistently putting together some of the best posts on Metafilter!

By: robotot

robotot — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 14:53:20 -0800

Aldous Huxley's "Chrome Yellow" and "Brave New World" under philosophy. He might have a decent library, but he sucks as a librarian.

By: meadowlark lime

meadowlark lime — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 02:56:39 -0800

He might have a decent library, but he sucks as a librarian. I too am enraged at the categorization of this free ice cream!