Happy Reading.

December 27, 2004 8:52 PM

eScholarship Editions. Like ebooks? Want something free, nonfiction,"scholarly", publicly accessible, and more recent than Gutenberg ? (Lately I'm on an Ancient History kick.) My problem with this "eScholarship" site is they try to make it hard to download a whole ebook to read offline. For one of those, for people who are interested in 20th-century political history-cum-theory that's never had much to do with any U.S. election, today I'm recommending the Platform.
posted by davy (12 comments total)

Obligatory FPP comment...haha, just kidding. ;)

I've always liked the idea of ebooks, but I never use them. One, I hate reading things for long periods on the computer screen. Which leads me to two, I have no hand-held (like a palm pilot or rocket book) to read these ebooks.

I guess I'll just continue using the old fashioned method of jotting down interesting ebook titles on a piece of paper and either checking them out from the local library or buying them.
posted by snwod at 9:44 PM on December 27, 2004

thanks davy! (i'm going to grab this one: Critical Crossings
The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America)

snwod, i just print em out at work : >
posted by amberglow at 9:47 PM on December 27, 2004

snwod, i just print em out at work : >

Haha! Yeah, I'm sure that make me even more loved that I already am around the office! ;)

I just like the feeling you get when holding a book. That's another reason I don't think I'll ever take to ebooks.

But, this is a cool post nonetheless!
posted by snwod at 10:10 PM on December 27, 2004

An interesting view of ebooks from Cory Doctorow's speech on DRM.
posted by dhruva at 10:21 PM on December 27, 2004

looks like there's some interesting books there ... thanks
posted by pyramid termite at 5:23 AM on December 28, 2004

This is indeed an excellent resource.
The UCal version of the site was previously posted by y2karl, so enthusiastic comments can be found there as well.
posted by languagehat at 8:27 AM on December 28, 2004

Critical Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America

Good choice. Thank you for bringing that one to my attention; I'm bookmarking it too.
posted by davy at 9:46 AM on December 28, 2004

I'd rather read an e-book than the tight-margined thick paperbacks that are impossible to hold with one hand or lay on the table. If I read it on a laptop, I can eat or drink coffee or...um...do things.
posted by NickDouglas at 11:34 AM on December 28, 2004

I don't think I'll ever take to ebooks.

I find reading ebooks on my Palm as tactile an experience as holding and flipping a paper book. I am constantly changing hands, increasing and decreasing the auto-scroll rate and making bookmarks and annotations. Inverting the display to white text on a black background makes it incredibly easy for me to read. I also like being able to hold four or five 400+page texts on a single postage-stamp-sized SD card. My only complaint is the derth of free and current literature. Looks like eScholarship might help. Thanks.
posted by piskycritter at 11:38 AM on December 28, 2004

If I read it on a laptop, I can eat or drink coffee or...um...do things.

MPEG?
posted by davy at 1:36 PM on December 28, 2004

The UCal version of the site was previously posted by y2karl, so enthusiastic comments can be found there as well.

On April, 3, 2003 at that and, moreover, it's exactly the same link, languagehat--davy has double posted.

Ha Ha! /Nelson Muntz
posted by y2karl at 4:32 PM on December 28, 2004

No, on second glance it's the same site but a different page with the same content. And, truth be told, it couldn't have been found in a search.

All the same--to the beat of the ancient childhood taunt referred to in the common parlance as as ''neener neener neener'':

davy made a double post! davy made a double post!

*gloat, gloat, gloat*
posted by y2karl at 4:53 PM on December 28, 2004