Monday, October 29, 2007

Week 9 - Thing 22 - eBooks

We came along a bit late for the free content on the World ebook fair. It finished on the 4th of August and it now costs the princely sum of $8.95 a year to join the world public library and access that stuff. As I am way too cheap to cough up that sum for a bunch of old ebooks, I went to Project Gutenberg's site and clicked through a few for free. Inkeeping with the weak thread of vintage horror I have tried to maintain through this blog, I read the first bit of The Fall of the House of Usher. I've never read it before and I was immediately captivated by the unusually lighthearted tone of the opening:
DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

Poe: wacky
Before long, reading off the monitor, eye strain set in.

Don't get me wrong, I think ebooks are fantastic and it's good that people are donating their time and energy to make all of this out of copyright material freely available, I just like paper books better is all.

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