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[eigwayne]

99 legal sites to download literature

The Classics

Browse works by Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad and other famous authors here.

Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.

The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.

Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.

Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.

Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.

Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.

Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.

Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.

The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.

Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.

Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.

Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.

Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.

Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.

Textbooks

If you don’t absolutely need to pay for your textbooks, save yourself a few hundred dollars by reviewing these sites.

Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.

Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.

KnowThis Free Online Textbooks: Get directed to stats textbooks and more.

Online Medical Textbooks: Find books about plastic surgery, anatomy and more here.

Online Science and Math Textbooks: Access biochemistry, chemistry, aeronautics, medical manuals and other textbooks here.

MIT Open Courseware Supplemental Resources: Find free videos, textbooks and more on the subjects of mechanical engineering, mathematics, chemistry and more.

Flat World Knowledge: This innovative site has created an open college textbooks platform that will launch in January 2009.

Free Business Textbooks: Find free books to go along with accounting, economics and other business classes.

Light and Matter: Here you can access open source physics textbooks.

eMedicine: This project from WebMD is continuously updated and has articles and references on surgery, pediatrics and more.

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[eigwayne]

Beautiful pearl that would please a prince, fit to be mounted in finest gold, I say for certain that in all the East her precious equal I never found. So radiant and round, however revealed, so small, her skin so very smooth, of all the gems I judged and prized I set her apart, unparalleled. But I lost my pearl in a garden of herbs, she slipped from me through grass to ground, and now I mourn with a broken heart for that priceless pearl without a spot.

I’ve just finished Simon Armitage’s translation of Pearl, the Middle English poem in which the poet, mourning on the grave of his baby daughter, falls into sleep and has a vision where he sees a land of surpassing color and beauty. From the far side of a stream, a young woman, dressed in pearls, addresses him. He learns that she is his lost child, and she discusses various personal and theological matters with him, finally showing him a vision of the New Jerusalem. He tries to cross the stream (despite having been warned against it) and suddenly wakes alone.

This work resonates strongly with several things that I’ve been thinking about. Especially at the beginning I found it startlingly reminiscent of that Hugo poem I translated on the death of his daughter – especially in the way the poet can’t name his grief head-on at first. He’ll look at the ground, the flowers, the beauty of nature; he’ll talk about his distress, but he can’t bear to say what actually happened. And there’s also a blurring of the age of the lost child. Hugo lost his daughter as a young bride; he thinks of her as a baby. The Pearl poet lost his daughter at less than two; he thinks of her as a young bride (of Jesus, admittedly, but she has the authority and self-possession of the adult he never saw her become).

The parallels with Dante are perhaps the most obvious. The poet, lost and broken-hearted, sees a treasured woman in heavenly bliss, and she reveals holy wisdom while roasting him thoroughly. They also more-or-less share a religious and philosophical framework, though I was really touched by the way the daughter’s explanation of her place in heaven subverts – or at least complicates – the medieval love of hierarchy. She describes herself as having been crowned queen in heaven, her father protests that he thought that was Mary, and she agrees, but adds:

“The company of the court of God’s kingdom live by a custom unique to this country. Everyone who arrives and enters here is called the queen or king of the realm, and not one person shall deprive another, but derive pleasure from a neighbor’s possession...”

Her father demurs, saying that for a two-year-old who hadn’t even learned to say her prayers, crowning her queen of heaven is going a little far.

“My Lord excuse me, but I cannot believe that God would make such a great mistake. On my word, young woman, it would be one thing if you were counted a countess of heaven or allotted the role of a lower lady. But a queen no less – that exceeds the limit.”

The daughter (grown fully into the sass as well as the dignity of a young woman) cites the parable of the workers in the vineyard, and informs her father that the Kingdom of God just doesn’t work like that, that no one’s glory comes at the expense of anyone else’s.

Finally, Tolkien translated this poem (and made a fair stab at keeping its rhyme, meter, alliteration, and structure, though that entailed, to my mind, a certain inevitable sacrifice of the vividness of its meaning.) Certain of its motifs appear to have sunk marrow-deep into his imagination, like the land of unearthly beauty across the water, a beauty you can see but are forbidden to grasp (and if you try, you find yourself cast out.) But, possibly because I’ve spent so much time with the Silmarillion, I was particularly struck by the longing for a lost jewel that is also a person, and the way that loss risks turning into obsession. It’s surely significant that precious is the word most often used to describe the lost pearl:

(From Tolkien’s translation this time; the daughter addresses the father:)

“But jeweller gentle, if from you goes Your joy through a gem that you held lief, Methinks your mind toward madness flows And frets for a fleeting cause of grief... And yet you have called your fate a thief That of naught to aught hath fashioned her, You grudge the healing of your grief, You are no grateful jeweller."

[eigwayne]

A research tip from a friendly neighborhood librarian! 

I want to introduce you to the wonderful world of subject librarians and Libguides. 

I’m sure it’s common knowledge that scholars and writers have academic specialties. The same is true for subject librarians! Most libraries use a tool called Libguides to amass and describe resources on a given topic, course, work, person, etc. (I use them for everything. All hail Libguides.) These resources can include: print and ebooks, databases, journals, full-text collections, films/video, leading scholars, data visualizations, recommended search terms, archival collections, digital collections, reliable web resources, oral histories, and professional organizations. 

So, consider that somewhere out there in the world, there may be a librarian with a subject specialty on the topic you’re writing on, and this librarian may have made a libguide for it. 

Are you writing about vampires? 

Duquesne University has a guide on Dracula

University of Northern Iowa: Monsters and Religion

Fontbonne University has a particularly good one on Monsters, Ghosts, and Mysteries

Washington University in St. Louis: a course guide on Monsters and Strangeness 

How about poverty? 

Michigan State: Poverty and Inequality with great recommended terms and links to datasets 

Notre Dame: a multimedia guide on Poverty Studies.

Do you need particular details about how medicine or hygiene was practiced in early 20th century America?

UNC Chapel Hill: Food and Nutrition through the 20th Century (with a whole section on race, gender, and class)

Brown University: Primary Sources for History of Health in the Americas

Duke University: Ad*Access, a digital collection of advertisements from the early 20th century, with a section on beauty and hygiene  

You can learn about Japanese Imperial maps, the American West, controlled vocabularies, Crimes against art and art forgeries, anti-Catholicism, East European and Eurasian vernacular languages, geology, vaudeville, home improvement and repairs, big data, death and dying, and conspiracy theories.

Because you’re searching library collections, you won’t have access to all the content in the guides, and there will probably be some link rot (dead links), but you can still request resources through your own library with interlibrary loan, or even request that your library purchase the resources! Even without the possibility of full-text access, libguides can give you the words, works, people, sites, and collections to improve your research.

Search [your topic] + libguide and see what you get!

[eigwayne]

Something that literally changed my life was working with a friend on a coding thing. He was helping me create an auto rig script and was trying to explain something to me but his words were just turning into static in my brain. I was tired and confused and there was so many new concepts happening.

I could feel myself working toward a crying meltdown and was getting preemptively ashamed of what was about to happen when he said, “Hey, are you someone who benefits from breaks?”

It broke me.

Did I benefit from breaks? I didn’t know. I’d never taken them.

When a problem frustrated or upset me I just gritted my teeth and plowed through the emotional distress because eventually if you batter and flail at something long enough you figure it out. So what if you get bruised on the way.

I viscerally remembered in that moment being forced to sit at the table late into the night with my dad screaming at me, trying to understand math. I remembered taking that with me into adulthood and having breakdowns every week trying to understand coding. I could have taken a break? Would it help? I didn’t know! I’d never taken one!

“Yes,” I told him. We paused our call. I ate lunch. I focused on other stuff for half an hour. I came back in a significantly better state of mind, and the thing he’d been trying to explain had been gently cooking in the back of my head and seemed easier to understand.

Now when I find myself gritting my teeth at problems I can hear his gentle voice asking if I benefit from breaks. Yes, dear god, yes why did I never get taught breaks? Why was the only way I knew to keep suffering until something worked?

I was relating to this same friend recently my roadtrip to the redwoods with my wife. “We stopped every hour or so to get out and stretch our legs and switch drivers. It was really nice. When I was a kid we’d just drive twelve hours straight and not stop for anything, just gas. We’d eat in the car and power through.”

He gave a wry smile, immediately connecting the mindset of my parents on a road trip to what they’d instilled in me about brute forcing through discomfort. “Do you benefit from breaks?” he echoed, drawing my attention to it, making me smile with the same sad acknowledgement.

Take breaks. You’re allowed. You don’t have to slam into problems over and over and over, let yourself rest. It will get easier. Take. Breaks.

[eigwayne]

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

[eigwayne]

Tonight, don't come in!

[eigwayne]

Tumblr Top Ships Bracket - Round 1 Side 1

This poll is a celebration of fandom and fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

[eigwayne]

it’s so insane we have to just keep showing up for work. no matter what is happening globally, locally, personally, you’re supposed to show up and act like the formatting on a report is actually really important and demands your attention.

[eigwayne]

Hey have you all heard about the scrolls. Have you heard about the scrolls.

[eigwayne]

[eigwayne]

[eigwayne]

DMBJ Updates

There's been a lot of stuff going on in the last two months, so I'll just list the updates below.

Looks like there is a Yucun Biji stage play in the works. (x)

A trailer for the Seven Star Lu Palace animation was released by iQIYI. It will be 3d animation. (x)

Merebear finished translating all of the novels in the main series.

NPSS finished revising Yucun Biji, so hopefully that will be published this year or next. Babu will also be involved (likely creating more of the little comics). Restart Volume 2 is still being revised.

The third book in the Qinling Sacred Tree comic series was published in March.

New: there will be another DMBJ mobile game loosely translated as "Daomu Biji: New Adventure" (盗墓笔记:启程).

[eigwayne]

The Quinton Reviews video was actually the first time I ever heard of The Beverly Hillbillies, but Quinton's dad talks about it as if everyone should know it, like the Simpsons. My theory is that maybe it is because I didn't grow up in an english-speaking country, and I'm curious!

If you have no idea what youtube video I am talking about, I would still appreciate your vote! Just vote whether or not you are aware of the sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies"

[eigwayne]

HALT!✋😐

did you remember to express gratitude for not having to subsistence farm today?

[eigwayne]

thinking about how pangzi made his life's mission love. he gets boiled down to just loving money but that isn't true at all. he doesn't make money chasing wu xie and xiaoge around- if anything he LOSES money. he doesn't care about legacies or politics. he doesn't care about grandiose plots. he doesn't care about the jiumen. he doesn't care about zhang bullshit. he certainly doesn't care about sanshu. his life would be infinitely easier if he walked away. but the people he cares about care about those things. he has a dog in the fight because he loves. that's all.

[eigwayne]

Hot take! A villainous read of Maedhros' character:

So Maedhros and his search for Elured and Elurin. I think what he regretted from that whole episode, was not that he couldn’t find them, but that he had tried to find them at all. I see him as someone proud (descendant of Míriel and Fëanor) and afraid of failure (the eldest child), so when he failed in finding them… Well, he convinces himself it’s for the better as they were a hindrance to the Oath, especially as he later learns Elwing fled with the Silmaril.

Now take this and bring this to the Havens. He curses himself for that fruitless search for Dior’s twin, when he should’ve chased after Elwing instead. No matter, he can do that in Sirion now. Maybe they hear about Elwing’s twins being around somewhere, but Maedhros this time will not go after the wrong quarry. So he chases after Elwing to her ultimate jump, while Maglor finds the twins to keep. But his prey eludes him still, the silmaril gone with the wind and Maedhros has failed once again.

Now take this, and bring this to the end of the War of Wrath. Maglor is pleading with him to repent and surrender. But Maedhros is dispossessed of everything but his pride and the Oath, so to that he shall keep. He is the eldest after all. He MUST succeed at all costs. So to the Host of Aman they go and steal the Silmarils. And lo. He may clutch them but he cannot possess them, so he was destined to fail all along. No matter what he does, it is not in his destiny to succeed.

Take this all in the backdrop of Nirnaeth. The biggest stain on his career as a leader. His biggest failure. Something he cannot reason away, so he must rectify. Score a victory to erase the loss.

And view his jump into a fiery chasm through the lens of him seeking death on Thangorodrim when Fingon came (something I believe was especially denied to him by Morgoth for Maedhros would rather die than be brought so low, while Morgoth would enjoy his humiliation).

His valiant deeds as Lord of Himring are a part of him restoring his pride. Even his kingship he gave up himself, lest it be taken from him through the Doom. And when he had stood aside at Losgar, it was perhaps in pursuit of keeping a promise made to Fingon. No oathbreaker shall he be now at Losgar, not when he had killed to keep the Oath at Aqualonde.

That is how I see him. As someone proud to a fault and deathly afraid of failing the responsibility put on him by his infamous yet illustrious father, in whose shadow he’s bound to live forever.