Over the last year I have really got back into reading – it had to take a back seat whilst I finished my studies but now they are done (for now anyway) I am trying to find time to catch up with all manner of book reading. You can see which books I have got through and get my thoughts on various books as I have read them on the books page. Reading a book can be a much more rewarding experience than sitting watching a movie – it can also be an eye opener often having a much deeper story than many book to film adaptations.

One book related project on the Internet that has been going for quite some time is Project Gutenberg, created back in 1971, and now containing over 28,000 books online – and these are available for download – the majority of which are free of charge (though donations to support the project are appreciated). Some books available, amongst the many different categories online. include The Time Machine, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Moby Dick, Dracula, A Tale of Two Cities, and War and Peace. Categories start at Adventure books up to Witchcraft and include Biographies, Children’s Books, Poetry and Politics along the way. One particular e-book which has caught my eye is the 1992 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Internet by Ed Krol.

With the emergence of portable reading devices and software for reading books on electronic devices there are many formats available. Fortunately, Project Gutenberg still supports the plain vanilla ASCII version (text only) which is compatible across a wide array of devices – as well as a number of more recent formats.

You can visit Project Gutenberg at www.gutenberg.org

Another, more recent, project is the ambitious Google Book Search which aims to provide a search and preview facility for millions of books from libraries across the world.