Online Literature Resources | Zev M-M
I hate to admit it, but I have yet to complete a book from start to finish this quarantine. For the most part, it’s my own laziness, but it may in small part be due to the lack of books in my house that I am curious to read. I know that most people have plenty of books at their homes and many of you will already know about some of the resources on this list, but hopefully at least a few of them are new and helpful.
All of the sources below are free and provide full versions of all genres of books. These sources include a wide variety of writing, but I excluded those whose primary focus was poetry, fanfictions, video storytimes, or other non-professional texts. I also excluded more limited resources like Instagram pages or smaller databases. Lastly, while researching for this post I found a lot of websites that host writing contests which I chose not to include in this list but may include in a future post.
Starting off the list, The Uni Library provides tons of useful information and sources like ebooks, audiobooks, and articles. You can also talk to the librarians as I am sure they have more information than I do when it comes to literature resources. Visit here or from the Uni High website.
The Champaign Public library has similar resources to the Uni Library. For most of the ebooks you will need a library card, but it’s still worth checking out. They also link to other free websites so I highly suggest giving them a look. Go to their website at https://champaign.org/e-library and click on “E-Library.”
For audiobooks, audible.com has released many free recordings of both classic and current books with no sign-in required. Audible also has audiobooks available in other languages which is helpful to practice pronunciation and retain what you have learned. Audiobooks are nice to listen to while doing monotonous tasks, if your eyes need a break, or before bed since they don’t require light. The free books can be found at Stories.audible.com
Librivox provides both audiobooks and full texts of public domain literature including everything from Shakespeare to the bible. They have a wider selection than audible, but no current books. I feel that audible has better quality recordings, but that is subjective.
I personally don’t use Spotify, but if you already have an account then they also provide professionally narrated audiobooks. To access them, create or sign in to an account at Spotify.com, click on “browser,” and then scroll down to “word.”
There are countless websites with free public domain books and many of the following sources have similar libraries. I tried to select a variety of the best ones, but I suggest trying them all out for yourself to see which you like best.
Scribd.com is technically only free for 30 days, but you can just sign in with a different account once the trial runs out. Signing up doesn’t require a credit card, and the website is one of my favorites since it has both classic and current books.
archive.org/openlibrary.org I think that everyone knows this source, but it has a massive amount of resources including millions of books and other texts. The only downside is that it is hard to navigate and the massive amount of books becomes overwhelming.
Manybooks.net Most of the sources have similar books, but this one stood out for the amazing interface. It is very aesthetically pleasing and makes it easy to find new books.
Pdfbooksworld.com This source also contains mostly public domain books. As the name would suggest, this site allows you to download the books as a pdf. This is especially helpful if you want to read while not connected to wifi.
En.childrenslibrary.org This website is “For children,” but it is nice for short fun stories, especially if you just need to be distracted and take your mind off of things. It has a unique design and lots of interesting filters to help find books.
As I said before, this search was focused on websites that provide professionally published full-length books. While researching, however, I came across some sources that don’t fit into that category. I may do future blog posts about online resources for poetry, video storytimes, places to submit writing, or literature-based social media pages, but I felt like I should include these two websites if I happen not to do similar posts later on.
Tor is a website that I have heard many positive things about. It focuses on sci-fi and fantasy and has everything from short stories to full-length books. Most of the texts are not professionally published, but written by the community or are side projects from professional authors. Tor also has a weekly newsletter which sends subscribers short stories from well-known sci-fi/fantasy authors
Wattpad is another community-based website. It has a very nice design and allows you to submit your own writing into contests and for others to read. If you don’t want to write, you can also just read other people's writing. The site also has forums where you can talk about literature.
I usually prefer reading books with a physical copy, as they are more comfortable to me. Reading books on a screen seems kind of tiring, but I don't have first-hand experience so I don't know. However, your post has many cool websites and resources I could try out. Thanks, and good job!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for these websites! No matter how many books we have on our shelves we'll eventually run out of them. I agree with Vraj that there's a certain thing about reading a real book. Personally, I love smelling the pages. They have a certain smell that's just very pleasing. Reading on-screen is not something I'm very familiar with, but now I guess I'll have to get familiar with it. Again, thank you for all of these resources. I'm sure that they'll come in handy at some point.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very useful post that I'll definitely look at again to find future resources. I don't personally mind reading electronically so this is perfect, especially for our current situation. I'm running out of books at home that aren't boring, or that I haven't read so this is really helpful.
ReplyDeleteMy family really enjoys reading, so theoretically, I could easily find a great book. However, I don't always have the same interests as them and I have read most if not all of the books in my own small collection. This is a great post because now I can easily access books that I am eager to read. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThis post seems to be very useful! I think it will be very convenient to have a list of useful resources to find different types of books from different places. While I do prefer reading books in paper, I would also like to know where I can find some outside of my own home online. Overall I think this review will be very helpful for a lot of people. Good job!
ReplyDeleteIf I ever have a book shortage I now know of many different places to look for books. Currently, if I ever read online, I use an app called Overdrive, which just requires a library account. The one limitation of this app is that it only has the e-books that your library owns. Having all of these other websites might make up for this weakness, thank you for sharing. Many bolognas and keep up the non-book reviews!
ReplyDeleteWhen I run out of books, I won't need to worry anymore! Due to its convenience I think I'm going to copy and paste this all into a document to be able to reference later. While I'm reluctant to subject my eyes to entire books on the blinding screen, I'm thankful that there are at least books I can access at home. I might even consider listening to audio books. Nice job gathering all these websites. Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteI'd further advise people to try to use the Champaign public library for providing books to read during quarantine, I personally have used their platform before to download ebooks. I use my phone, and you can just download the app called Overdrive and you can download ebooks from there. On your mention of Wattpad, as someone who has some experience with the app, I'd say it can be kinda hard to find an actually good book there. As all of their books are community sourced, the stories can be kinda wack and outlandish. There's a ton of fanfiction there too, both the good kind (the innocent pure, these are my characters in the Harry Potter world) and the bad kind (we don't talk about that). Wattpad is great if you want to try and 'publish' some of your own writing, though. Of course... don't forget to join audible and use this promo code for 2 free books!
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