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I’ve recently added a search function so that you can limit your Google search to just the blogs that are members of MetaxuCafe. I think that will be a good resource for everyone looking for literary topics online and you’ll find it right on the front page as well as other places on the site. Now if you want to read about, say Orhan Pamuk, but only want to search the litblogs you trust, you can narrow your search right here.

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Digitized reads

by paisleyandplaid on April 17, 2008

I discovered Manybooks,net four years ago when I was venturing outside the publisher’s literature anthology in search of readings that would better suit my students’ needs. The site is clean, only a few ads, and easy to navigate. Matthew McClintock maintains the site as a service to the Internet’s reading community. He reports that most of the works come from Project Gutenberg.  Amazing—no library card or gas, no time linits, no late fees, and 20,259 free texts from classics to dictionaries to pulp.

Users can search for a particular work or browse by author, title, categories, recent downloads, most popular, reviews, or new additions.  I find that “categories” is useful as it lists 56 areas such as science fiction, history, banned books, biography, and philosophy.  There’s mystery, poetry, psychology, young readers, and reference. The Harvard Classics is its own category.

Once you locate your ebook, you’ll need to either download it or read it online. Downloads are available in formats for your cellphone, iphone, Kindle, Palm, Blackberry, PDF, and many more. Most of the books are public domain or Creative Commons. Visit the “About” and the “Site News” links for more information.

Manybooks is completely free, but it does have a donations button. Why not? Another way to serve is to volunteer for Digital Proofreading. There’s a button for this program, too, and it’s an interesting read on how a text gets read, edited, and finally delivered. They ask for as little as a page a day, but readers may do a little or much.

I should note that in casually browsing through 20,000 texts, I’m unfamiliar with a most. Still, intriguing titles and sheer volume are compelling to a reader. But as you browse, some of the “household words” emerge: Shakespeare, Bacon, Freud, Barnum, Huxley, Webster, Franklin, Doyle, Montaigne, and more.

When people discuss etexts, the subject of comparison to traditional print formats arises. Articles abound. How often do you read electronically? For what types of reading: information or pleasure? What advantages or disadvantages do you see?

a few articles
http://www.readingmatrix.com/articles/horning/article2.pdf

http://www.unf.edu/~tcavanau/presentations/SITE/ElectronicTextsasCourseTextbook.htm

http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0096.html

http://www.eastgate.com/HypertextNow/archives/Electronic.html

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