Looking for a free book for that eReader?

I just discovered this free site today. Feedbooks has plenty of grist for the mill, both from the public domain, and from authors who submit their own original works, all free. I’ve picked up several from there, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be back for more.

Zorba’s Guide to free ebooks.

Try manybooks.net for more freebies.

The MobileRead Wiki has a huge list of free eBook sites.

Did you get a Sony model? Their Reader Library store has free reading from Google books, all in the public domain. I’ve gotten some good ones there. Added bonus: lots of childhood memories provided by perusing the lists. The Reader Library interface is clunky: no arrow or wheel scrolling unless your mouse is on the sidebar; no back-arrow to previous pages; it’s slow. How 1980-ish.

There’s nothing free at eBook.com, but check it out.  Become a free member and you’ll get coupons for 25% off of certain publications. Even with the discounts, there are no bargains there.

And finally, here’s a link to some additional software for PC, Mac and Linux computers. With this software you’ll be able to convert books in other formats into ePub volumes. It’s called Calibre. Here’s a link to a discussion of the Calibre eBook management tool.

Links to eBook web sites

Do you have any gems you’ve discovered? Please do leave your finding in the comments section below.

Oh no! Bad Canada!

Canadians currently have their panties in a moist wad over the treatment of some of those detained by our forces operating in Afghanistan. Well, strictly speaking, the detainees weren’t mistreated by Canadian forces. They were mistreated once they were turned over to their own government.

This charge-of-the-prisoner-brigade is being led by Canada’s eastern media conglomerates, including both newspaper and television elements. Their continued feeble attempts to unseat/embarrass Canada’s minority government by any means possible, most recently by tar and feather, is becoming tiresome.

Like the author of the link below, I too have been wondering just what, exactly, Canada should do with the folk heroes prisoners we take in Afghanistan. If they musn’t be turned over to Afghan officials for fear of torture, then what?

Well,

  • let’s build a prison to house them all in Afghanistan, staffed by easy-going and friendly Canadians, with guaranteed access to some of that free health care, Tim Hortons and a double-double, on demand.

No? Well then,

  • let’s fly them all to Canada for incarceration in our prison system. This would make them eligible for refugee status, because certainly they would face torture by Afghan citizens upon their return to that miserable zoo rock outcrop country that they call home.

If that’s not good enough,

  • how about a catch-and-release program? We could load our guns with blanks, thus ensuring no one gets hurt. Once a Taliban is captured, he automatically gets tagged with a colored dye, like a bad polar bear in Churchill, Manitoba when he gets too close to town.

After all, we’re fighting for freedom over there, and Canada shouldn’t be fawning over hurting giving special treatment tagging imprisoning polar bears Taliban freedom fighters.

Here is a far more eloquent diatribe by Ezra Levant than I could ever write, but with which I agree, wholeheartedly.

If you’re coming, don’t forget the bananas

(Canada is) behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee’s tea party

But before you get here, clean up your own back yard, and keep your limey prejudices to yourself.

A concerted campaign has now begun to expel Canada from the Commonwealth.

Finally! Thank you, Jesus! The Commonwealth has been an underachiever for decades now. It’s primary raison d’être was for the benefit of the motherland, more commonly known at the time as Great Britain. Britain isn’t so great now.

Canada now threatens the wellbeing of the world.

More than China. More than the United States. More than Pakistan. More than any other country in the world. Imagine that.

Canada.

You bastards out there had better be on your toes, or we Canadians will drag you down to the level of, uhh, something or other. Maybe.

turning this lovely country (Canada) into a cruel and thuggish place.

Been to Nairobi recently, have you?

I am so tired of the klimate klowns and their incessant whining and sniveling. They ignore the problems in their own back yards, all the while insisting that this nation or that nation or another nation over there, somewhere, is the real culprit of climate change, diamond mines, gold mines, logging, rainforest stripping, desert wind, camel dung, cloudy skies and poor tipping.

Kiss my fat, white, wrinkled Canadian ass. Furthermore, while you’re flying over, just keep right on going to some country that you might actually want in your Commonwealth of nations. If you don’t like it here, go somewhere else.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this guy would like it anywhere.

Link to his guardian.uk article here, from whence the quotes come.

White House gate crashers

Does anyone actually care about these people? I’m sure the media will make it appear as though we do.

civil suits alleging non-payment for services, a long-running (and very public) feud with Tareq Salahi’s parents about ownership and control of their now-idle 108-acre winery and claims the couple made about accomplishments that can’t be verified. – washingtonpost.com

There appears to be some problem with locating the gate-crashers. Heaven forbid that the two of them were actually wanted.

Secret Service agents came to the winery Friday, seeking the couple.

Four important pages of the washingtonpost.com and article here. Nine staffers assigned to write the story. Kind of beggars the imagination, doesn’t it?

I could be wrong, but to me, the most important thing about this entire debacle is the fact that the Secret Service is now unable to locate the couple.

Leo & Lucy on cleaning up the environmental mess

You just have to love the environmentalists among us – even the ones in the motherland, if you’ll pardon the pun. Here are samples of the awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, world-wide non-events that we should be concerned about, according to Leo & Lucy of the guardian.uk. Or, more likely, those items appealing to fast-disappearing newspaper subscribers in the internet age, apropos of a going-green column.

  • Pesky Christmas lights. Should we dump them in favor of, umm, something that burns less energy, but costs us more money to replace? Oh why not? It’s only money. And a class thing as well, if you light up your entire house. A class thing? What’s with that?
  • Now then, you’re wanting to be a tourist, are you? Planning on flying or taking a barge home for Christmas? With all that pollution you emit on your aeroplane, ocean liner, truck, van, automobile? Then find a sleigh, a horse, a feed-bag and a shit-bag and tour locally. Added bonus: What goes in the front end and comes out the back can be burned for heat.
  • After all that, are you still wanting to put up a tree? What about those poor Georgian natives, slaving away on treetops to ensure enough seed for Denmark to grow it for you?
  • Are you anxiously awaiting that Christmas card or parcel from a friend or loved-one? They don’t appear to have a green solution for that one, other than, Postman, tune up your vehicle. As for gift wrap, recycle those old scandal sheets.
  • Those pesky plastic grocery bags must be replaced by paper. Does anyone not know someone who doesn’t use them for garbage bags? Now that’s recycling.
  • Using a coal fire to stay warm? Nuh-uh. Use wood instead. That is, if you can find any in the forests of Great Britain, long-ago denuded by those eco-friendly ship builders of yore.
  • Santa and his reindeer are another problem entirely. How much does it cost NORAD to track this Christmas abomination from the North Pole to various and sundry countries around the world? Let’s give his animals back to the Laplanders and sweep Santa Claus into the dustbin of Christmas past.

Oh yes, I know. Canada has a monstrously huge carbon-emission footprint. Really? Just how huge would that monstrously huge carbon-emission footprint be, Canadian?

Why, it’s two per-cent of the world’s problem. Yes, you heard me right. Two per-cent.

Now then, just how much money should I be spending to reduce that to 1.5 percent? One percent? Zero? Is zero, in fact, realistic for any country? I doubt it very much.

Come on, how much should I be spending? How much should my government be spending to reduce an absolutely meaningless two per-cent emission problem to, say, one per-cent?

I’d bet good money that the cooking fires, tire fires, camp fires and dump fires in all of Africa emit more pollution than Canada. Let’s get those Dark Continent polluters to do their bit for the environment forthwith.

Oh wait, we can’t. They get a pass because they’re already living in filth and starvation, as they have for thousands of years. Perhaps we should send them a few of our extra plastic garbage bags and show those Africans how to clean up their act.

Good luck with that.

Library to go

Updated below.

Looking for some free books for your new eReader? Go here.

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There was a time in my life when, as a pre-teen (can I describe myself as once having been a pre-teen? Probably not, given my age.), and then as a teenager, I read anything I could get my hands on. I remember being in the local small-town library where I discovered a copy of On the Road by Jack Kerouac on the shelf. After briefly thumbing through it I decided that it was something I absolutely needed to read. I was probably 12 or 13 at the time.

Books about the holocaust also figured prominently at a certain stage, in particular those describing – complete with pictures – the horrors of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and other “work” camps. I was struck speechless at the inhumanity of it all.

I vaguely remember some worn volume describing the NKVD, subsequently renamed the KGB after the war (WWII). Given the book’s condition, it, like many other volumes in the library, was probably donated.

Space. Science fiction. Flying saucers. Yes, flying saucers were big back then. Now, not so much.

Indiscriminate in my choices? Probably, but I never wondered what the nice old lady behind the desk might have thought about my reading list. Nor did I particularly care. I was free to bring home whatever I chose to, and I’m certain that my parents would have descended on said nice old lady and raised holy hell had I been censored. I wonder how that would work today?

The Sony PRS-600 eBook reader
The Sony PRS-600 eBook reader

Now, all of that wonderful experience and the memories can be replaced with one of these. I wouldn’t have missed it for all the world – which, I might add, I have also experienced – but this reader is the cat’s ass! Check out the review if you’ve been wavering, like I was, until a couple of days ago.

Free or paid, there’s no limit to what you can find for this thing. Added bonus: it accepts dozens of formats. It comes with Sony’s own software, but I also downloaded a copy of this to help with non-Sony publications, such as newspapers.

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Update: I picked up an M-Edge Executive jacket for my PRS-600 Touch, and added a light to go with it. Review here. Link to M-Edge’s on-line store here.

Riding farther, seeing more