Before we go on, I need to make clear the ethics of downloading books, so please do try to understand the difference between copyrighted and public domain books. (There is a test question about this.)
COPYRIGHT: A copyright is the legal ownership of exclusive rights, which is given to the author or creator of an original work. It is only given if the author or artist goes through certain steps toward filing for legal copyright protection of their work. The copyright is a way to protect writers like our own Tara Benwell. It is very bad to download or copy material that is copyrighted.
PUBLIC DOMAIN: Written works or art that belong to everyone. When a book is in the public domain, it is not protected by a copyright. These are free for anyone to copy and nobody is harmed.
Let's see if you understand the difference.
Q: When is it not wrong to download a copy of a book?
A: Public domain books are the only books that are legal to download and harm no one by copying.
I am giving you a link to many thousands of books you can download and read if you want them because they are in the public domain. Remember, public domain means these are free to be copied because the writer and publisher have already had their chance to be paid for their work. The copyright for the books has expired and they now are available for anyone to copy and read.
To start out, this may be easier to use while you are getting used to the huge number of books. I suggest this LINK TO the 100 MOST POPULAR free E-books at the Gutenberg Project.
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top Many of these are considered to be classics and the type that high school students or college students may be required to read. This selection may be easier for you to work with. They have many thousands more books besides these.
The collection below also includes the Gutenberg Project books. It is a combination of several large collections from around the world. Last night I read from some books originally written over 400 years ago. It is amazing what they have, but also can be confusing with so much to choose from.
LINK TO University of Pennsylvania Online Books Library (over 800,000) Public Domain Books - http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
Please Remember:
Anything really new will not be free to take because of copyright protection. Please do not steal form the writers by taking copyrighted material. You can feel good about reading the classics here without hurting the writers, by taking books they should be paid for :) If you like this please tell your friends who are also trying to learn English. :))
AUDIO BOOKS FOR FREE:
Thanks to my friend Hong Thanh Nhan, for giving this link we can also download some legal, public domain audio books right here - http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/
It is so good to be honest and use the public domain materials, and please thank Hong Thanh Nhan for pointing out this very good link.
Comments
Thanks for this blog!
For your additional reference, please be informed that I've already commended some other useful websites on my blog 'Some dilemmas & future improvement of learning English'(http://my.englishclub.com/profiles/blogs/some-dilemmas-amp-future)as below;
(This was a part of my comment for one of my friends;)
The third points you made is essential for an English learner after grammars. Hence I would like to recommend some good websites for the reading materials as follows;
http://www.bookyards.com/
http://www.classicauthors.net/
http://www.readprint.com/
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Category:Bookshelf
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/catalogs/bysubject-top.html
I am very grateful for this, exciting news!
-Nadiyah-
I knew about the Gutenberg Project,but I am very thankful about the second link,it's a huge collection.
I found an interesting work in it,a fiction,where the author reads the whole book,chapter to chapter himself:
http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx
Blessings to you
Nadira
rathanam
Some of the 100 most downloaded books may contain objectionable content. The Kama Sutra as translated from the original Sanskrit is one such book that most people will not want on their computer. This is a very old book from ancient India and it has some portions that are a sexual instruction manual. If you would be offended by this, you are now warned, do not download it. Such a collection as this will have every possible book in the world that can be found including some that most people will not like.
I apologize to anyone who may have been unaware and accidentally opened this book. I do not believe that other top 100 books are in this same category, but be prepared to use your delete key. With free things like this we take chances by looking at popular items.
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