By Brandi Bunch, Managing editor
As a senior, I have been forced to read my fair share of profoundly uninteresting books throughout my college career. Naturally, this has rendered me sympathetic to those other students being forced through similar material.
However, I do find it somewhat disturbing that people just don’t seem to read any more.
I should qualify that by saying that I mean real, classic, powerful books. The latest piece of young adult “crap-lit” doesn’t count (I usually refer to it by another term, but that one is unprintable. It rhymes, so I’m sure you can figure it out).
There was a time when a love story was more complex than “oh no, what a coincidence, we’re stranded and there’s no electricity, we must cuddle together naked for warmth.” Pfft, please.
None of this is to say that there is no value in more recent books, nor that everything written in the past is composed of pure brilliance, but I wholeheartedly believe that many of the classics we groaned about in high school really do have something to offer.
The works of Shakespeare have survived centuries, and I believe that this is because they do such a fantastic job of capturing human emotion. Even today, in a crazy world of Twitter and microwaves, you can pick up one of his plays and feel as though you understand the characters. That is amazing to me.
Maybe that explains part of the appeal of most classic literature. The “Twilight” of that day was quickly allowed to fall out of favor and didn’t live into modernity, so we’re left with the good stuff.
Granted, that theory does not explain “Moby Dick.” I still see that book as little more than a glorified National Geographic documentary, only more boring. However, that’s just me.
Anyway, the point of all of this is not just to insult the young adult “romance” genre, though that is something of a hobby of mine, but to explain that the classics, those books that you hear people mention and then feel ashamed for not having read them, are literally a Web site away.
Amazon.com’s Kindle reader provided something of a revolution in reading while on the go, but the Web site has also incorporated e-books for the computer into its inventory by adding Kindle for PC. And here’s the best thing: Many of the books written before copyrights exploded all over the place are completely free.
“The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” “War and Peace,” “The Man in the Iron Mask,” “Sense and Sensibility…”
Yes, I’m a huge nerd, but I literally downloaded 65 books over spring break, legally and without paying a cent. Needless to say, it will take a while to get through them, but I’m looking forward to it.
The e-books are generally put online by volunteers, so the occasional typo is to be expected. However, the majority of what I have read thus far has been spotless.
The Kindle for PC program (also free) can be downloaded from amazon.com, and is easily found by typing it into the search bar. From the main Kindle page, you can see the best-sellers lists, one for free books and one for purchased.
Free e-books are also available through Project Gutenberg, a site that relies on an online community to digitize books with expired copyrights. Project Gutenberg can be found at gutenberg.org.
Finally, even if you would never read for pleasure (I suppose I forgive you), colleges do have a habit of assigning the classics. Classics that you usually have to buy at the bookstore.
Just a thought…