There are three major e-book projects that make electronic books available for free to the general public in accessible formats (usually HTML, sometimes “plain text”). One is Project Gutenberg, an American project that does not limit itself to English. I am a volunteer there. The second is Project Laurens Jz Coster, named after the Dutchman … Read More

van alle menschen, die oom verachtte en wantrouwde, waren er geen, voor wie die verachting en dat wantrouwen grooter was, dan voor de winderige, laffe, beginsellooze jongelieden van de negentiende eeuw From “Joachim Polsbroekerwoud” by Vlerk, pseudonym of Bernardus Gewin (1812-1873). Translation: “because of all the people that uncle hated and mistrusted there were none … Read More

The other day the wonderful Louise Hope post-processed a book I had uploaded to the Distributed Proofreaders to be proofread, and did so at a speed us mortals can only dream of. The book is an Arthur Pinero play, The “Mind the Paint” Girl, which had some success on Broadway and in the form of … Read More

Richard Carrier writes about the books recovered from the lava-covered town of Herculanaeum, and this sentence that he came across in one of them: For example, consider the man in Alexandria who was a foot tall, with a colossal head that could be beaten with a hammer, who used to be exhibited by the embalmers. … Read More

Today’s harvest: 5 kg of books (5 copies for PG, to the left, and 15 for myself). I spent about 4 or 5 euros. Weight: 5 kg. About five were free. Later some friends came by and we went out dumpster diving. I think I got 5 or 6 more books, although I am afraid … Read More

The editors of the 1865 word list of the Dutch language strike a blow for linguistic tolerance. (The rest in Dutch.) De redactie van het “Groene Boekje” uit 1865, de “Woordenlijst voor de spelling der Nederlandsche Taal” van De Vries en Te Winkel, konden het niet nalaten om bij de bespreking van leenwoorden even uit … Read More

(The following was translated from German to Dutch by someone else, and from Dutch to English by me. It may have lost something in the translation. There’s also a horrible mixed metaphore in there that I somehow totally failed to manage to steer around.) […] Which of these is the most perfect, the best, the … Read More

It would appear that a second wave of e-book readers is coming. The first wave languished, probably because of a lack of books to read on the LCD based devices, but we’re a couple of years further down the road, and the market might be bigger now. The new devices are: e-paper based expensive slow … Read More

The Toziers are prepping have posted a book, Gerald Stanley Lee’s The Voice of the Machines, for via the Distributed Proofreaders, the letter percolator of Project Gutenberg. Soon you will be able to read it, but for now Bill posts a fragment: Some people are very fond of looking up at the sky, taking it … Read More

Robert Louis Stevenson complains that he cannot read Treasure Island; a pity, he feels, because from what he is told, it would be just the sort of book he’d like: I want to hear swords clash. I want a book to begin in a good way; a book, I guess, like Treasure Island, alas! which … Read More