BBW: Free to Read

In honor of Banned Books Week, I thought I'd like to share with you today some free reads. Yep, free. A lot of older books you can read online for free (if you were unaware of this, check out The Online Books Page or Project Gutenberg). The Online Books Page has a section called Banned Books Online, where you can find one-time naughty books like:
Ulysses by James Joyce
Candide by Voltaire (hilarious)
Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland (also hilarious, in it's own way)
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
and Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
among others.


But it's not just old books you can find for free on the web. (side note: I don't think I've called the internet "the web" since I was 12)
Some authors believe in making their work "open source," meaning that you can view it, download it, and sometimes change it and post it as a fan-fiction adaptation, etc, all for free (like onOpen Source Books). Some offer them under a creative commons license, which has some rules, but essentially means its free to you.
Of course, many of the open-source books you'll find online are probably, let's face it, shit.
But there are legitimately good authors out there who just want to get the word out about their books. Some offer them completely free, and some offer them on a pay what you want basis, ala Radiohead.
And some -- and this is why I bring this up -- offer their work for free because they believe that everyone should be able to read anything. Hence, the BBW tie-in.

One of the best books I read this summer, (Little Brother by Cory Doctorow) which coincidentally happens to be about taking a stand and fighting against oppressive governmental control, happens to be online for free.
When I found this out, it made me more excited than I can tell you. I LOVED this book, and I reviewed it here.

Well, on Cory's website, craphound, he talks about creative commons licensing and why he believes in it, and he offers his book Little Brother (<---that right there is the link for the free download!), among other works, for download.

So here's a little bit about Little Brother. If you like what you read, stop over and check out this and Cory's other books. And remember that not everyone is out to control what you read and what you think...

Marcus, a.k.a w1n5t0n, is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works, and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school's intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.
But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they are mercilessly interrogated for days.
When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.



You may also like:
This interview, Cory talks with Creative Commons about his book, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and about his decision to use Creative Commons.
Or this article on why free ebooks should be standard practice.