Project Gutenberg and free e-books

I enjoyed Hugh’s blog of 6/9/07 on free e-books and looked for some on Google. On the Project Gutenberg site is a list of yesterday’s 100 top downloads (these are out-of-copyright books that have been scanned by volunteers). Unsurprisingly books such as Pride and Prejudice and Grimm’s Fairy Tales are popular, as is the Kamasutra (unfortunately in French!). There are some weird ones – I was intrigued that yesterday 114 people downloaded Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes. I wonder how many of the non-fiction works have been downloaded by students researching essays. I’ve made use of quite a few online e-books and journal articles for essay-writing this year, and their location on my computer screen seems to mesh into my work mode. Like many other people, I’m not sure I could read a whole novel from a screen for fun. As an experiment, I was planning to find one that I could put on my iPod to see how much of it I could get through, but I’ve already gone off the idea. I’ll stick with library books for now.

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top