Hey Lemmy, what are some good public domain books?
I tend to like the volunteer-read audiobooks on librivox and recently was curious about their Sherlock Holmes books (never read or listened to before), but I'm wondering what else is out there and popular in the community.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ has pretty much all of them
Frankenstein. If you’ve never read it, the caricature of what it is has done it no justice. It is an incredible book.
I've actually been a big fan of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for a long time so thank you for bringing it up and indulging me in a happy nostalgia. I've heard it described variously over the years as possibly the first or at least early science fiction, as well as even proto-feminist in its more subtle themes. Might be a good time to return to it. There are some potentially Luddite themes as well but in an era when people were en masse encountering rapid technological advancement while philosophical approaches to that rapid advancement were still in their infancy it's a forgivable flaw.
I definitely recommend Dracula — not only is it good, but it’s also the prototype for basically every subsequent vampire book/movie:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345
"We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin is the book that inspired both "Brave New World" and "1984" and my favorite of the three. If you go looking for it in paper form it's sometimes credited to Eugene Zamyatin, as Eugene is the English version of Yevgeny.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61963/61963-h/61963-h.htm
Tha card by Arnold Bennet https://librivox.org/the-card-by-arnold-bennett/
The count of Monte cristo by Alexander Dumas: https://librivox.org/the-count-of-monte-cristo-by-alexandre-dumas/
I just finished count of monte cristo! I've never read a more epic and fulfilling revenge story. It was entertaining the whole way through.
Monte Cristo is hands down my favourite book that I've read. Absolutely a must-read.
If ebooks are acceptable to you, then Standard Ebooks is the shit. Proper classics, formatted in a nice way, ready to drop onto whatever reading device you have.
don quixote is great, i reread it recently and had a great time
One of my all-time favorite books. Be sure to get a good translation though.
I tried to read that but it was way too drawn out. I think I made it to page 200 or so and he didnt even leave his village yet. And it has 1000 pages. That was years ago so numbers might be wrong.
I notice that you specifically mentioned audiobooks, but if you're interested in written ebooks, check out Standard EBooks
They take public domain books and run them through a detailed process of editing and typesetting them to create beautiful versions.
Personally, I'm a big fan of The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain. There is an audiobook version on Librevox too!
The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany is fantastic; it's a bunch of early fantasy stories by an Irish lord who was a huge influence on the fantasy genre.
Tolstoy's work is all in public domain. Anna Karenina and War and Peace are great. Not the easiest to read, but unparalleled.
“Three Men in a Boat” by Jerome K Jerome is hilarious.
If epic English poetry doesn't scare you, Edmund Spencer's The Faerie Queene is great. It's like Arthurian legend on acid. Check out the version with the Walter Crane illustrations, which are also excellent.
Allan Quatermain reads like an indiana jones book written in the 19th century.
I also second everything written by Dumas and Verne.
Candide by Charles Voltaire is funny IMO