thebookcases

[thebookcases]

Why do reading wrap ups one month at a time when you can do THREE months of books in one hour long video?

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We reviewed Batman: The Long Halloween, and it's fair to say we had a lot of feelings!

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Time for the obligatory Bookshelf Tour video, but with a twist! Does @ironwoman359 actually know where things are on the shelf? @mug-of-beans is going to find out!

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FAMOUS AUTHORS

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

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.

MATH AND SCIENCE

FullBooks.com: This site has “thousands of full-text free books,” including a large amount of scientific essays and books.

Free online textbooks, lecture notes, tutorials and videos on mathematics: NYU links to several free resources for math students.

Online Mathematics Texts: Here you can find online textbooks likeElementary Linear Algebra and Complex Variables.

Science and Engineering Books for free download: These books range in topics from nanotechnology to compressible flow.

FreeScience.info: Find over 1800 math, engineering and science books here.

Free Tech Books: Computer programmers and computer science enthusiasts can find helpful books here.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

byGosh: Find free illustrated children’s books and stories here.

Munseys: Munseys has nearly 2,000 children’s titles, plus books about religion, biographies and more.

International Children’s Digital Library: Find award-winning books and search by categories like age group, make believe books, true books or picture books.

Lookybook: Access children’s picture books here.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

Bored.com: Bored.com has music ebooks, cooking ebooks, and over 150 philosophy titles and over 1,000 religion titles.

Ideology.us: Here you’ll find works by Rene Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, David Hume and others.

Free Books on Yoga, Religion and Philosophy: Recent uploads to this site include Practical Lessons in Yoga and Philosophy of Dreams.

The Sociology of Religion: Read this book by Max Weber, here.

Religion eBooks: Read books about the Bible, Christian books, and more.

PLAYS

ReadBookOnline.net: Here you can read plays by Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and others.

Plays: Read Pygmalion, Uncle Vanya or The Playboy of the Western World here.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: MIT has made available all of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and histories.

Plays Online: This site catalogs “all the plays [they] know about that are available in full text versions online for free.”

ProPlay: This site has children’s plays, comedies, dramas and musicals.

MODERN FICTION, FANTASY AND ROMANCE

Public Bookshelf: Find romance novels, mysteries and more.

The Internet Book Database of Fiction: This forum features fantasy and graphic novels, anime, J.K. Rowling and more.

Free Online Novels: Here you can find Christian novels, fantasy and graphic novels, adventure books, horror books and more.

Foxglove: This British site has free novels, satire and short stories.

Baen Free Library: Find books by Scott Gier, Keith Laumer and others.

The Road to Romance: This website has books by Patricia Cornwell and other romance novelists.

Get Free Ebooks: This site’s largest collection includes fiction books.

John T. Cullen: Read short stories from John T. Cullen here.

SF and Fantasy Books Online: Books here include Arabian Nights,Aesop’s Fables and more.

Free Novels Online and Free Online Cyber-Books: This list contains mostly fantasy books.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Project Laurens Jz Coster: Find Dutch literature here.

ATHENA Textes Francais: Search by author’s name, French books, or books written by other authors but translated into French.

Liber Liber: Download Italian books here. Browse by author, title, or subject.

Biblioteca romaneasca: Find Romanian books on this site.

Bibliolteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes: Look up authors to find a catalog of their available works on this Spanish site.

KEIMENA: This page is entirely in Greek, but if you’re looking for modern Greek literature, this is the place to access books online.

Proyecto Cervantes: Texas A&M’s Proyecto Cervantes has cataloged Cervantes’ work online.

Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum: Access many Latin texts here.

Project Runeberg: Find Scandinavian literature online here.

Italian Women Writers: This site provides information about Italian women authors and features full-text titles too.

Biblioteca Valenciana: Register to use this database of Catalan and Valencian books.

Ketab Farsi: Access literature and publications in Farsi from this site.

Afghanistan Digital Library: Powered by NYU, the Afghanistan Digital Library has works published between 1870 and 1930.

CELT: CELT stands for “the Corpus of Electronic Texts” features important historical literature and documents.

Projekt Gutenberg-DE: This easy-to-use database of German language texts lets you search by genres and author.

HISTORY AND CULTURE

LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.

The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.

Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.

Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.

Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.

RARE BOOKS

Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.

Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.

Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.

2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.

Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.

Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.

Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.

Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.

MYSTERY

MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.

TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.

Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.

POETRY

The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.

Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”

Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.

Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.

Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.

QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.

CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.

PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.

MISC

Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.

World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.

DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.

A Celebration of Women Writers: The University of Pennsylvania’s page for women writers includes Newbery winners.

Free Online Novels: These novels are fully online and range from romance to religious fiction to historical fiction.

ManyBooks.net: Download mysteries and other books for your iPhone or eBook reader here.

Authorama: Books here are pulled from Google Books and more. You’ll find history books, novels and more.

Prize-winning books online: Use this directory to connect to full-text copies of Newbery winners, Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer winners.

[thebookcases]

I've seen the sentiment somewhere that they should pirate instead of using things like hoopla and libby because those services cost libraries a lot of money to provide.....NO NO NO! You should use those services *because* they are expensive! You need to show the library board that the services are in demand, so that funding can continue to be justified when levies end up on the ballot. If you don't use the services they will get CUT and then everyone in your community (particularly older patrons who don't know how to pirate an epub but have had the library's technology assistant help them download libby and hoopla to the ipad their grandkids got them) has lost access.

Libraries have been under attack so much already in recent years, and now that Project 2025 is looming not just as a vague promise but an active threat, they need our support more than ever.

USE YOUR LIBRARY'S SERVICES. THEY ARE THERE TO BE USED.

If you don't use your library's Libby and Hoopla collections, you run the risk of losing that access. Your library will see the low numbers and think "no one is using this service and we need to save money so let's get rid of it". I am saying this because at the library I work at, the collections team reduced the number of books you can check out each month for Hoopla. They reduced the amount by more than half - 25 to 10 - all because people weren't using it at the same capacity they were during lockdown.

Digital collections are expensive yes but when libraries are able to show the library board or city that their services are highly sought after and used in large numbers, that aids in arguing for increasing the budget - or at least keeping the budget where it's at.

Whatever your opinion on pirating is, you are doing not a single person favors by not using library resources just because you have a misunderstanding in how it actually works.

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i'm tired of how boring the little free libraries are in my neighborhood. i'm going make a little newspaper to put in them. i will inject some whimsy and delight into this godforsaken suburb all by myself

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Yes I made a tier list video, No I don't care that everyone makes tier list videos. They're fun to watch, and as it turns out, fun to make!

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In November, one of my favorite accounts on instagram put this resource together. It is a Google Sheets spreadsheet that is organized by children’s, middle grade, young adult, and adult book resources.

It is pay what you can, but I highly encourage you to pay even as little as $1 if you truly do not have extra funds. She put in a lot of work for this resource and we shouldn’t expect people to do work like this for free.

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A current trend over on bookstagram is sharing your 2025 bookish goals. I've never really thought past "how many books do I want to read this year?" so this really pushed me to think more.

Listen to more audiobooks.

I started listening to audiobooks last year when I had too much to do at home and not enough time to physically sit down and read. I've never been able to listen to audiobooks in the past; so I knew that I wanted to make it a goal to listen to more this year.

2. Read 5 graphic novels.

If I'm being honest, I'm probably selling myself short with this goal. I read more than 5 last year and they're great to read in between heavier standalones or if I need a short break before starting another book in a series.

3. Actually read the eARCs I'm sent.

I have a bad habit of requesting books from NetGalley, and then not actually reading them. It's a miracle publishers still send ebooks my way. I have several on my shelf that I'm extremely excited for, so hopefully that gets me in the groove of reading them more consistently.

4. Read at least one chapter a day.

This one is pretty self explanatory. I'm taking it further though by trying to read in more than one format a day: ebooks, audiobooks, and physical books.

5. Continue to seek out diverse books.

Diversity comes with intersectionality. Reading diverse books doesn't just mean reading BIPOC books - even though that's a big part of it. It means reading authors who have different experiences than mine, different cultures, ethnicities, and races. It means reading about people who are disabled in ways that I am not. It means reading about different sects of the LGBTQIA+ community. Reading diversely means to read about things that do not pertain to you directly, and so much more than what I've detailed here. It's one of the best things I've intentionally done; and I can't wait to continue it.

6. Post more about what I am reading.

Again, pretty self explanatory. I want to make this something fun, and not a job, especially since I don't get paid, but I also want to share books with people. I'm hoping by posting here, on instagram, and some on threads, I can grow my own corner of the book community more and get more recommendations to people/from people.

Thanks for reading all of this if you did!

Happy reading!

[thebookcases]

My Rating: 2/5 Stars

I always feel bad when I dislike a book that by most metrics is perfectly fine.

Must Love Books by Shauna Robinson is a contemporary fiction book about a woman named Nora who once dreamed of working with books but is now burnt out and underappreciated in her dead-end job at a small nonfiction publisher. When her pay is cut and she's left unable to afford her bills, she decides to pick up a freelancing job to make ends meet...at a rival publisher. And to make matters worse, she's beginning to fall for Andrew Santos, an author who she must convince to sign a book deal...but which publisher should she push him towards?

Reading the description you'd be tempted to think this is a romance novel, but it's really not. While the relationship development is a major factor, the true story centers Nora as she tries (and often fails) to figure out where her life is going.

I enjoyed Shauna Robinson's sophomore book, The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks, and I empathize heavily with any book loving introverted character that finds themself stuck in their job, unsure what they're doing with their life (aka, just Me in 2022), so I was expecting to, if not love this book, then to really enjoy it.

Sadly, I just couldn't get into this one. Nora is a well written character, with very real and human struggles, but unfortunately I really didn't enjoy my time with her. I found her choices frustrating; not in a fun to watch way, but in a "cringing from second hand embarrassment/anxiety" way. The "liar revealed" plot is one that can be tricky to pull off, and it unfortunately didn't work for me here.

*The next few paragraphs contain very minor spoilers, scroll to the last paragraph to avoid*

There were also a few little story structure things that betray this as a debut novel. For instance, at roughly the fifty percent mark, the book suddenly starts discussing some serious mental health issues without mentioning at any point prior to this that Nora is dealing with anything more serious than burnout. I wouldn't say that these flaws would be enough to detract from your enjoyment if you're otherwise having a good time, but since I was already growing frustrated with the book due to personal taste reasons, they were very noticeable to me.

I was actually so frustrated by the whole "dancing around the truth and trying to avoid getting caught" portion of the book in the middle that I switched from audio to ebook so I could start skimming up until her secret is found out (which, of course, also doubles as the third act breakup) and read about how she handles that situation. I normally don't skim books, but I was at a point where I didn't want to keep reading, but also didn't want to DNF it, so I compromised by skimming *just until* I was interested again. I did find the direction that Nora went after her secret is revealed to be satisfying, though the ending did feel a bit abrupt.

*Minor Spoiler section over, you may continue here:*

Despite my low rating, I do think this is a good book for what it is, and I would recommend it to readers who enjoy contemporary fiction and contemporary romance. The 2/5 stars is much more a reflection of how much I personally did/didn't enjoy the book rather than of its quality. Still, I can't help but feel that every aspect of this book-- from feeling directionless in your life/career to the whiteness of publishing/the literary canon to the potentially unprofessional but oh-so-alluring romance-- was all executed better in The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks, so if you're looking for a relatable millennial protagonist in a story about books and booklovers, I'd recommend you read that instead.

[thebookcases]

Bookworm Will Review 2025 (#6)

Title: 'The Ash House'

Author: Angharad Walker

Rating: 2.75 / 5

Review: (SPOILERS)

Are keeping secrets a nicety or are they a naughtiness?

Right off the bat, the audiobook surprised me because sound effects and foley work, wow. Love that addition! It reminded me of when I started listening to The Magnus Archives.

Immediately you are drawn into this mystery as a foster child, later being given the name Sol (short for Solitude), arrives at a makeshift school/home for other lost children. Sol is here because he was told that they can cure him of his aching bodily pains which no doctor has been able to figure out. However, the Ash House is anything, but normal.

We meet a large cast of children, all around the same ages, who look after each other and are all named after virtues. Their mysterious headmaster hasn't been seen for three years and things turn worse as soon as Sol arrives.

The plot slowly unfolds in a way that does leave readers with far more questions, however, given the age demographic, I think was a fantastic ghost story!

Isolated location? Check.

Rotting and breaking down boarding school? Check.

Creepy Children? Check.

An invisible and controlling force? Check.

The dual POVs between Sol and Dom (short for Freedom) was really interesting because we got the outsider/newcomer and essentially the veteran whose lived at the ash house for quite some time. Watching how they both interacted with their world as they began questioning and poking holes into each other's perspectives was chilling! Toxic overly positive (and brainwashed) Dom showing the harmful effects of having been in this situation with the hope of being "cured" of all his naughtiness (he hardly has any to begin with in my opinion) before being released back into the world, it all was rather emotional.

The two trying to "help" the other was really engaging and made them full of character. I do wish we got a bit more with the other children, Libby (Liberty) and Con (Concord) were rather secondary main characters that did help keep the story going, but I'm not totally upset about that. I ended up liking Con and Dom the most as opposed to Sol (who was the original MC).

Pacing didn't feel rushed and the writing was fine.

I'd be lying if I said the fact that the missing headmaster AND the doctor were the same person didn't surprise me. This Dr. Jekyll and Hyde situation where supposedly his niceness and naughtiness were two singular entities representing what the "goal" of the ash house was a very nice added touch.

If you are someone who prefers a more straight forward story with clear and specific answers, I'd say you could skip this one, because you are left with more questions. I know I personally wanted A LOT more answers, but again, given the age demographic and the genre, I think it was pretty solid execution of a spooky story.

Overall, not bad!

[thebookcases]

Too many writers are using generative 'AI' to make their book covers, so I've written a guide on how to make your own cover for free or cheap without turning to a machine.

If you can't afford to pay an artist, you CAN make your own!

I hope this is a helpful overview that covers the basics and points to some free resources.

[thebookcases]

[thebookcases]

New year, New Video!

Join us ( @mug-of-beans and @ironwoman359 ) as we subject one another to some of our favorite books (and comics and manga) for our 2025 TBRs.