Bite-sized Books
Oct. 21st, 2005 02:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsFor those who never find the time to read, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
menikoff has found ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
bigcomfychair, which posts a chapter of a famous (noncopyrighted) novel once a week. They're currently closing up The Count of Monte Cristo.
That community was inspired in turn by Classic Novels in 5 Minutes, which is a listserv which will send you an installment of a book you've chosen out of their collection at regular intervals. (For Shakespeare's sonnets, it's one a day, while Dickens is done in monthly chunks.)
There's already an LJ feed for the site that's reprinting Pepys at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
pepysdiary. There's also an LJ community that's reprinting Dracula on the dates mentioned in the letters and journal entries in the book - ie, if something in Dracula was dated August 20, then on August 20 that chapter goes up. (I'd put the link in, but scary things happen when you search on dracula as an interest, and I can't find it.)
For those who prefer a hard copy, Stanford has yet to announce what (or if) they're doing for the next Dickens project. However, Barnes and Noble has the most adorable little hardbacks for $6... you'll find them lurking near the checkout or on their website under "Collector's Library" - a little over 50 titles in miniature hardback editions (roughly 3 x 5) that are well priced and well-made... and just the perfect size to drop in a purse or a bag. I'm fighting to not (re)buy the entire works of Austen just because they're so gosh-darn cute. If you've got a literate kid who you want to start on something with more heft to it than most kid's books, The Secret Garden, Wind in the Willows, Alice In Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, and Jungle Book are all titles in the series - the right size for a kid, the right price for a parent. For students who already carry a lot of texts, there's a Huck Finn, Moby Dick, Silas Marner and Uncle Tom's Cabin that won't break the bank. For fannish purposes, there are sturdy, reasonably priced copies of Dracula and Phantom of the Opera. There's also nonfiction, including a Descartes and Darwin's Origin of the Species.
Barnes and Noble appear to be getting into publishing in a big way. They also have two John Bellairs omnibus editions out for Halloween.
If you don't mind dialing the quality (and the price) way down, there's Dover Publications, which has a hit-or-miss collection of Thrift Editions of classics averaging $2 a book. (A combination of Collector's Library and Dover is how I've been picking up the texts for the "classes" I'm doing.) They're paperbacks on newsprint, but if you want a crap copy of something, especially for a single use, better to start there. Why pay extra?
menikoff has found bigcomfychair, which posts a chapter of a famous (noncopyrighted) novel once a week. They're currently closing up The Count of Monte Cristo.That community was inspired in turn by Classic Novels in 5 Minutes, which is a listserv which will send you an installment of a book you've chosen out of their collection at regular intervals. (For Shakespeare's sonnets, it's one a day, while Dickens is done in monthly chunks.)
There's already an LJ feed for the site that's reprinting Pepys at
pepysdiary. There's also an LJ community that's reprinting Dracula on the dates mentioned in the letters and journal entries in the book - ie, if something in Dracula was dated August 20, then on August 20 that chapter goes up. (I'd put the link in, but scary things happen when you search on dracula as an interest, and I can't find it.)For those who prefer a hard copy, Stanford has yet to announce what (or if) they're doing for the next Dickens project. However, Barnes and Noble has the most adorable little hardbacks for $6... you'll find them lurking near the checkout or on their website under "Collector's Library" - a little over 50 titles in miniature hardback editions (roughly 3 x 5) that are well priced and well-made... and just the perfect size to drop in a purse or a bag. I'm fighting to not (re)buy the entire works of Austen just because they're so gosh-darn cute. If you've got a literate kid who you want to start on something with more heft to it than most kid's books, The Secret Garden, Wind in the Willows, Alice In Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, and Jungle Book are all titles in the series - the right size for a kid, the right price for a parent. For students who already carry a lot of texts, there's a Huck Finn, Moby Dick, Silas Marner and Uncle Tom's Cabin that won't break the bank. For fannish purposes, there are sturdy, reasonably priced copies of Dracula and Phantom of the Opera. There's also nonfiction, including a Descartes and Darwin's Origin of the Species.
Barnes and Noble appear to be getting into publishing in a big way. They also have two John Bellairs omnibus editions out for Halloween.
If you don't mind dialing the quality (and the price) way down, there's Dover Publications, which has a hit-or-miss collection of Thrift Editions of classics averaging $2 a book. (A combination of Collector's Library and Dover is how I've been picking up the texts for the "classes" I'm doing.) They're paperbacks on newsprint, but if you want a crap copy of something, especially for a single use, better to start there. Why pay extra?
