Books
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Sources
- https://openlibrary.org/
- Belongs to the Internet Archive. Attempts to catalog all books, includes descriptions, ratings, library and purchase links.
• Wordcat.org
- Library site
• ISBNDB
- Most extensive DB; commercial site.
• Bookwyrm
- Federated social reviewing site.
• Project Guttenberg
- “a library of over 70,000 free eBooks”
• Better World Books
- “Better World Books is your online destination for books offering the widest selection of used and new books. We give booklovers across the world access to the power of knowledge at an affordable price and help them stay connected through reading. We better the world, one book at a time, by making a difference with every purchase made through donations and environmental programs. It’s simple: Buy Books. Do Good.”
• The Pirate Bay
- The Pirate Bay often has entire collections of an author’s books, some of which are otherwise out of print and difficult to obtain.
• The Anarchist Library
- an archive focusing on anarchism and anarchist texts.
• Robbie’s stuff
- an E-book wiki, with v some interesting books for download in PDF format
• Charles Roth MPC
- IP “The cultural detective.”
• Educational Bookshop
in Jerusalem (online orders)
“20 sites where you can download books for free”
Here are 20 websites where you can download books for free: Project Gutenberg .com Open Library .org Google Books .com ManyBooks .net PDF Drive .com Bookboon .com Free-Ebooks .net Smashwords .com DigiLibraries .com GetFreeEbooks .com Obooko .com Baen Free Library .com Internet Archive .org HathiTrust .org Standard Ebooks .org ReadPrint .com Bookrix .com Librophile .com Online Books Page .edu
Services, lists
▪ Listing (in French) of books from every country; some with reviews
Read, partly read, or obtained
Began to read this June 25. Finished December 27, 2025.
Today finished reading Perdido Street Station , a fine "weird fantasy" novel by British author China Mièville. It took me a long time to get through it; if at times my reading faltered, the fault is surely mine - I seem to fair better with non-fiction these days.
The novel is startlingly imaginative, the characters complex, and the world-building prodigious. It's maybe twice the length of the average novel (though this is always hard for me to judge with e-books). The style reminded me a little of Alan Moore's "Jerusalem" or of Gene Wolfe - who Mièville calls one of his influencers.
- leviathan Wakes
- irst book of the Expanse series. Listened to this as an audio book, on my walks. Now on the second book.
◇ Arséne Lupin (Maurice Leblank)
- eading this on and off, as an ebook.
◇ Le Pays des Autres (Leila Slimani)
- reat book, sensitively written – still reading.
◇ Dora Bruder (Patrick Modiano)
- A very good, typically Modiano novel.
◇ The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler▪ Review. Enjoyed. Wrote about it here
- ◇ Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, by Luke Kemp
- xcellent.
◇ Notes on Complexity
- The Theory of Life, Consciousness, and Meaning in a Self-Organizing Universe”▪ Interesting. I don’t know of any other book that looks at metaphysics from the point of view of the scientific theory of complexity.
◇ Run and Hide
- y Pankaj Mishra (2022) (purchased on Kobobooks)▪ Follows the lives of highly successful Indians as they interact with the world. Enjoyable, though it took me a while to get into the novel. Read in 2024
◇ The Dawn of Everything (David Graeber and David Wengrow)
- Purchased this as an audiobook and read in 2023. Fantastic book. Challenges our perceptions of past societies and allows one to imagine a different future.
◇ Ministry for the Future (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Very interesting and thought-provoking
◇ The Climate Book (Greta Thunberg)
- xcellent. Everyone should read
◇ Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk▪ Enjoyed, reading notes
To read: topics, authors, books, notes
Topics
Climate change and capitalism
Recommended book links
‘Le bonheur du néant’ by Sunethra Rajakarunanayake, translated into French by Janaka Samarakoon https://suriyakantha.org/fr/article/prema-puranya-or-le-bonheur-du-néant
“The novel first captivated me with its remarkably fluid, boundary-breaking format—a striking departure from the conventional local literary scene when it was released 25 years ago in Colombo by Vidarshana, an obscure yet daring young publisher.
“It appeared to seamlessly blend fiction with non-fiction: carrying the expansive sweep of a novel, while hinting at an intimate touch of autofiction—its authenticity, however, remaining ambiguous. At the same time, it could be seen as a hybrid—part novel, part collection of short stories. Both profoundly intimate and eminently sociological, the work defies easy classification, thriving in its contradictions.”
Authors of interest
Perry Rhodan
German Sci-Fi writer
Valerie Perrin
Cory Doctorow
Vandana Shiva
Bruno Schultz
W S Sebald
Rohzin Rahman Abbas
Sayaka Murata
Fredrich Jamison
Thomas Piketty
Listen: “Thomas Piketty’s Case for ‘Participatory Socialism’” by The Ezra Klein Show
Katherine May
- author and podcaster living in Whitstable, UK. Known fo, “Enchantment”, “The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Time”, “The Electricity of Every Living Thing”. Hosts series of podcasts on her site, has a Substack blog.
Reading list
Notes
Booker prize 2023
‘Soul-shattering’
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
wins 2023 Booker prize https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/26/prophet-song-paul-lynch-booker-prize-winning-novel-ireland-fascist-control
The other titles shortlisted for the prize were
The Bee Sting
by Paul Murray,
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
,
This Other Eden by Paul Harding
,
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
and
Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
.
In 2022, Shehan Karunatilaka won with The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, set during the Sri Lankan civil war. In 2022, Shehan Karunatilaka won with The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, set during the Sri Lankan civil war.
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