December 4-5, 2021: Crowd-sourced Online Reading List

[2021 marks the 50thbirthday of Project Gutenberg, the amazing web resource for full texts from across literary and cultural history. So this week I wanted to share a handful of the American literary works you can read in full on PG, leading up to this crowd-sourced reading list—add yours in comments, please!]

On the overall question of reading in different formats, Olivia Lucier writes, “I did start to read Anna Karenina on Project Gutenberg….lasted about 7 chapters. I have read many ‘books on tape’ as I still say and it is difficult to follow characters. Seeing a name versus hearing it makes a difference in comprehension. As complex as Anna Karenina is, hearing it versus seeing it made it VERY difficult.”

Other online collections:

Rachel Weeks Bright shares this “working list of open access 19th-century periodicals.”

Ilene Goldman tweets, “I’m a big fan of the Hathi Trust Digital Library. I’ve found some real gems there.”

One of my favorite librarians, Jenny Fielding, writes, “And of course—free ebooks and audiobooks through your public and academic libraries.”

Pearl Harbor series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What would you add to our reading list?