"The unexpected becomes expected."
Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, and Other Written Words
(not by me)
House of Leaves by Danielewski. Cory Doctorow. Various other corporate-punk and cyberpunk writers. Neal Stephenson especially. Bleak House, Tale of Two Cities, Pickwick Papers, Christmas Carol by others Dickens. Wild Swans at Coole by Yeats. Chuck Palahniuk. Simon Green. Christopher Moore. Various by Heinlein. Lord of the Rings. Neverwhere, American Gods and Stardust by Gaiman. Sandman. Ambrose Bierce. Hellblazer. The Amazing Spiderman. The Philosophical Strangler. Douglas Adams. Mad magazine. Carlton Mellick III. Ray Bradbury. PHILIP K DICK. The Vampire Hunter D series. Stuff by Burroughs, Haggard, Verne, Wells, and that Scarlet Pimpernel woman. Thomas Hardy. Iron Man. James Joyce. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Dostoevsky. Horror by King, Kethum, Keene, Laymon, Matheson, Poe and Lovecraft. Joe R Lansdale. Good Omens and Pratchett's various Discworld trappings. P.G. Wodehouse. Bill Shakespeare. The Road by McCarthy. Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. George R. R. Martin. The Walking Dead. Harlan Ellison. John Campbell. That Vogt fellow. Plato. Nietzsche.
Top 14 (15) Fictional Characters
Doug's (currently) 32 Question Reading Quiz.
Another book questionnaire: "By Threes" Book Questions.
Dalmilling Cards.. For those people annoyed, like me, by people thinking that someone reading would rather just talk, instead. This helps you to be get rid of them, or at least be rude back. (Dalmilling is trying to talk to someone while they are trying to keep reading, more information here.
On Reading Journals. I don't use them, but what the hell? Maybe you want to and are looking for a few quick and easy suggestions...or just general irreverant advice.
And, because I do get asked about this from time to time, let me give you another great essay from the desk of me: "You're Damn Right I Read It More Than Once!.
The Four Horror Endings. Four general ways that a horror novel (or movie) can end.
First off, see the "Words" edition of "The Best Things in Life are Free" for some excellent sources for free e-books. There are, of course, numerous ways (such as bittorrenting, warez sites, etc) to get non-free e-books for free, as well as ways (such as Amazon.com to pay for legal e-books. The sad thing is, it tends to be easier to read, and much easier to use, the "illegal" ones since paranoid publishers occasionally cripple our ability to actually take advantage of legal e-books. This is a paradox that should likely be fixed as soon as possible.
There are numerous pros and cons for using e-books (the article also includes a brief description of an easy to use e-book store, discussion of copyright issues, and possible formats) , which I try to list out in the aforelinked article.
Also, I want to bring your attention to Cory Doctorow's article E-books: Neither E nor Books, which I have a plain text edition hosted here on my site. Doctorow is a big promoter of the new potentials of e-books, and my hat goes off to him.
A writing friend of mine once pointed out the works of "Topaz" McGonagall as very bad poetry. At first, a random smattering of his stuff didn't seem that bad, but then I read a little more and a little more. I began to realize that he was truly horrible. In fact, he often bears the title of "Worst English Poet" (I suppose out of those that were published and were in contending as real poets, since there are likely worse that one would never have heard of). In fact, you can get a whole fix of his stuff at http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/ if you want. I think you might enjoy it. It is different, or something like that.
But, for your pleasure, I have included two of my favorites and one to grown on...
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database has lots of user submitted information on your favorite SF stuff.
The Online Books Page Presents Banned Books Online. Includes many links to books you can read for free, as well as discussions about why these books were banned. Could be an excellent resource for teachers.
Just in case you were ever wondering how to pronounce some author's name, you might can find a clip of them saying how at Author Name Pronunciation Guide.
While not the most scientific thing in the world, Books that Make You Dumb is a fun website that plots SAT/ACT style scores against favorite books on Facebook.
The king of all online bookstores is undoubtedbly Amazon.com. If you are one of those who hasn't used it (a surprising number, at least when I managed the bookstore and would occasionally bring it up), I do recommend it. It has an unprecedented selection, good discounts, connections to lots of other buyers, and so on. Now, some smaller bookstores claim it is the death of the book business, but that is not precisely true. I worked for a small bookstore chain that was doing just fine. The feeling of picking up the book, thumbing through it, and putting it back on the shelf is a strong one for a booklover. At the same time, though, no brick-and-mortar is going to have this level of selection in this number of languages and editions.
My second most used online bookstore is Science Fiction Book Club. They are a "book of the month club" and all that implies (annoying letters in the mail, cheaper edition books passed off as "hardcover quality", weird and kind of variable selection). At the same time, they often reprint hard to find SF/Fantasy classics and are an intriguing way to see books you might not normally hone in on. Also, they have very regular sales at good prices.
The Library of America is an excellent way to preserve America's writing, and comes highly praised from me.
Baen's Webscriptions is one of the best places to get e-Books, assuming you like, generally, military science fiction. While their titles are sort of limited as to genre, their model is astounding. A simple, DRM-free, HTML-based ebook delivery for a reasonable price. Includes a "memory" of which books you have already bought so you can redownload if you have to. Complete with free books (of good quality, too) and sample chapters to help make up your mind. Hopefully others will pay attention to them.
My other two frequented bookstores are eReader.com, which focuses on PDB files for their own reader software, but has a good selection and I like the reader; and RPGNow which publishes lots of indie-RPGs in a ton of formats.
There are actually several good sources for getting free text online (legally). Arguably the greatest of these is the Project Gutenberg collection. Another worthy place is the Bartleby.com Library. My favorite for easy of browsing and strength of collection is the University of Adelaide eText Library.
You also have The Internet Sacred Text Archive which specializes on books about religion, mythology, folklore and other esoteric subjects.
If you are more into the sf/fantasy side of things, then you should get over to Free Speculative Fiction Online. More precisely you can find some good stuff on Baen's Free Library. I have a special place in my heart for this one, since Baen is one of the leaders in e-book promotion today and their fans love them for it . [Special shout out especially to Eric Flint's Philosophical Strangler which was my first I read on their free page and still one to make me chuckle, even if it is more of a guilty pleasure than anything.]
For those interested, I have inlcuded the following on my website for quick browsing and to help get out the word:
THE ENTIRE HONORVERSE FREE E-BOOK CD (ONCE AGAIN BROWSABLE THROUGH THIS WEBSITE) Just hit "back" to get back to this page.
There are also some free e-texts on my zombies page.
For those wishing to get in touch, you can contact me in a number of ways
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
The only request is that you let me know if you are using something from this page (mostly for my own curiosity). This license only applies to original works by W. Doug Bolden (i.e. me). All quoted and referenced works, be they movies or books or other websites or whatever, are subject to their original license or copyright and are the property of their owners. I have made a strong effort to properly attribute them, so please respect me and them by doing the same.
"The hidden is greater than the seen."