http://worldebookfair.org/

Free downloads of ebooks for one month. Many as you want from 2M books. All pdfs.

I'm not promoting anything, just sharing this link that I got on my computer tips ezine.

Wow, that sounds like a great thing to share Petra! Thanks for thinking of us!

Wow Petra, thanks for sharing that! I can't wait to dive in to see just how many of my "to-buy-soon" stack I can find there.

Ohh that´s precious

Do we have to join? I don't see how to get it started.

THANKS.

You don't have to join, all you do is find the book you want (I used the search engine and I didn't tick either mp3 or pdf) and then opposite the title, on the same dotted line, but far to the right, is a little icon, Adobe I think, just click on it and it will start to download automatically.

If you don't have Adobe Reader (I hate it) you can get Foxit (very good, fast) or Sumatra PDF (even faster) for free.

Petra X wrote: "You don't have to join, all you do is find the book you want (I used the search engine and I didn't tick either mp3 or pdf) and then opposite the title, on the same dotted line, but far to the righ..."

Thanks...I will try it.

July 2009

56 Anonymous Lawyer A Novel by Jeremy Blachman (Legal fiction, humour)
57 The Dark Room by R.K. Narayan (Fiction, Indian)
58 Bottlemania How Water Went on Sale And Why We Bought It by Elizabeth Royte (popculture, environment, industry)
59 The English Teacher by R.K. Narayan (Fiction, Indian)
60 Seaside Style by Diane Dorrans Saeks (Interior design, architecture, photography)
61 Searching for Schindler by Thomas Keneally (Memoir, writing, Holocaust)
62 Children of the Flames Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz by Lucette Matalon Lagnado and Sheila Cohn Dekel (Holocaust, history, evil)
63 I Remember by Fara Lynn Kransnopolsky (Russia, Jews, history)
64 Needles A Memoir of Growing Up with Diabetes by Andie Dominick (Memoir, medical)
65 Zelda's Bloopers The Good, the Bad, and the Whatever by Carol Gardner (Humour, dogs)

66 Memoirs of an Arabian Princess of Oman and Zanzibar by Emily Ruete (Memoir, Islam, history, slavery, racism, royalty)

I downloaded this book for free from http://worldebookfair.org/ which is having a promotion of as many of 2.5 M books for free this month. It was a thoroughly enjoyable slim tome illustrated with contemporary photographs. The form of Islam practiced by the royal family of Zanzibar seems to have been a great deal more relaxed than present-day Saudia Arabia; the book has nothing in common with Jean Sasson's writings on female Saudi royalty.

There are three very odd things about the book. The first is that it is almost, from beginning to end, a paean in praise of Islam and the Oriental way of life as opposed to the awfulness of European culture and Christianity. Very odd because at a young age the princess converted to Christianity, married a German commoner and apart from travels abroad, spent the rest of her life in Germany.

The other very odd thing is her defence of women as living greatly self-empowered lives of equality (within the home, or palace) in Zanzibar but excluding concubines from this as 'bought women'. The other odd thing is her defence of African slavery by Arabs as opposed to American and European slavery, saying that although it was pretty hard to start with and although they weren't paid for their work, they never had another worry in their lives. To some extent this must have been true as slaves were commonly armed and a dozen or so might escort a princess and her serving women as she walked through the streets at night. Obviously, the slaves were not in revolution. She makes a great point of saying how slavery had to be ended in British possessions in Africa but not in Zanzibar which belonged to her family.

It is hard to read the extreme racism she quite overtly displays in her discussion of the native Africans. But is the most honest I have ever read on racial attitudes, slavery and the rights of women in Islam, not just because the author was a product of her time, but also, despite her long years in the West, because the author was so absolutely convinced they were the right ones.

These Islamic and Arab attitudes of the last century (she died in 1928) seem to have been passed down wholesale in Sudan, where Arab enslavement of Africans (whether Christian, Animist or Islamic) is mostly ignored by the world and where the slaves are not armed, most definitely not - there's enough bloodshed and revolution without arming them with daggers and knives, more's the pity.

For further reading I suggest the wonderful Slave by Mende Nazer, Francis Bok's Escape From Slavery and perhaps the top model's Alek Wek's most moving biography,Alek From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel. All easy-reading!)