US Politics-2022

I wouldn't dis-encourage anyone, but personally I would not pay $50 for access to ebooks. Although if there is good access to new e-textbooks, this could be a real nice investment for a college student.

Here in the US most county library systems have at least some kind of shared database. So you are not reliant on just what is available locally.

And most systems have access to Hoopla.

Years ago I wrote this article for a different forum. It may be a little out of date.

----------------------

Free books from Amazon

The Baen Free Library
http://www.baen.com/library/
This is a paperback book publisher. What they have done is put some of their older titles on line to help promote their newer titles. Most of these books are science fiction. Looks like about a hundred books.

Free eBooks at Barnes and Noble
Download Free eBooks to Read with the Free NOOK App
Again it’s promotional. These books would work with just about any of the “eReaders”. And they must work with the B&N eReader. I don’t see anything I want to read, though. Looks like they have a hundred though.

eBook Store
http://www.ereader.com/servlet/mw?t=freebooks&si=59
Looks like they have a hundred or so.

Fictionwise
http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/freeBooks.htm?cache
They have 50 free ones.

Internet Archive
Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine
“The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.”
This place is huge! Tens of thousands of files
All of this stuff is out of copyright (I think that means 19th century and older).

Project Guttenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
  • Thirty thousand free eBooks.
  • All in the public domain.
  • Most books in the public domain are at least 100 years old.
  • However that does include Doyle, Twain, Austin, Carroll, Joyce, and Stoker.
  • Multiple formats.
  • iPhone should have no problem with these.
ManyBooks
50,000+ Free eBooks in the Genres you Love | Manybooks
They are pretty user friendly and they make it easy to browse. Lots of formats. There are user reviews of books.

TomeRaider
This site is for the TomeRaider e-reader. But they have an iphone app so it works. Some good stuff here. Four thousand free books.

iTunes Store
There are at least 100 free books here. Alice in Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice, Peter Pan...........

Wowio
http://www.wowio.com/index.asp
This is a pretty cool site. Their free files are all PDFs. I haven’t fooled around with these on the iPhone at all. But tablets should be ok with these. file this for further study.
I've lived in rural areas where shared databases are not a thing. In fact, where I lived in Illinois before moving back to the St. Louis area, I had no public library access at all other than paying $75 per year to get a membership at the nearest town that had a public library, and that was a very small library, w. practically no digital content. I could use the card to check out books at a somewhat larger library in a town about an hour distant, but it couldn't be used to check out digital content.

Locally, Hoopla can only be used to access Hoopla content in the public library in the local library, not any adjoining libraries, even if they have joint borrowing agreements, and many areas don't have public libraries or just small, poorly funded ones w/o Hoopla.

Also, Hoopla doesn't carry much of what I read.

Because of my eyesight and other factors, my book reading is limited to audiobooks. I listen to 6-15 hours daily, as I do my daily chores, etc., so I go through a lot of books.

ETA: My local library allows 8 items per month to be checked out through Hoopla. That lasts me a week, sometimes less.
 
Last edited:
I've lived in rural areas where shared databases are not a thing.

I had no idea that there were places like this.
ETA: My local library allows 8 items per month to be checked out through Hoopla. That lasts me a week, sometimes less.
I typically run out hoopla by the end of the month.

As far as audio content goes - there is some good stuff in iTunes.
 
I had no idea that there were places like this.

I typically run out hoopla by the end of the month.

As far as audio content goes - there is some good stuff in iTunes.
You need an Apple device for itunes, don't you?

In Illinois, I lived outside a town which had declined to participate in library funding. Therefore, residents couldn't use the one and only library in the county, w/o paying a $65/yr fee. I wasn't even eligible to do that, since I lived one mile closer to the one and only library in the adjoining county, and that library was even tinier and had a higher annual fee.

IME, it's not that unusual that resource-sharing agreements among libraries exclude digital materials, because the libraries often don't permanently own those digital materials, and the fees they pay for the materials are determined by the number of people who have access to them.
 
You need an Apple device for itunes, don't you?
In the past you didn't. it might have changed.

I'm so spoiled. all the libraries in my county share everything, except some of the stuff at the universities and colleges which have their own system.
 
  • Friendly
Reactions: Mischief
Just took a quick look - it appears that you have to have a monthly itunes subscription to access the free books?
 
  • Friendly
Reactions: Lou
Oh. but wait. I bet there are free audio books thru their Podcast app. You have to a particular book OR just put in Audio Book and you can browse the shelves.

Pandora has some but I couldn't figure out how to "browse the shelves.
Spotify has some too. and I was able to browse their shelves - no problem.


There is also Librivox. I am not sure this is true but I thought Librivox was something developed for vision disabled but now its free to everyone. the Readers aren't paid actors but volunteers. so the quality isn't that great.

I haven't checked it out yet but here is also BBC Sounds. I'm not sure or not if they have any books. But they have a ton of audible edutainment.

Open Culture and Learn Out Loud are worth a look-see. The both boast thousands of audible books
 
What do ya know, another disgusting, misogynistic tweet by Gaetz-
You know how much they love (and thrive on) the undereducated




Matt Gaetz

@mattgaetz

How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?


6:20 AM · May 4, 2022·Twitter for iPhone
 
  • Angry
Reactions: anarchist100
What do ya know, another disgusting, misogynistic tweet by Gaetz-
You know how much they love (and thrive on) the undereducated

Matt Gaetz
@mattgaetz

How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?


6:20 AM · May 4, 2022·Twitter for iPhone
There was a really cute tweet by a guy in response to this, asking where he can find these under-loved, over-educated cat women, because he's in the market for one. He included a photo of himself with his cat draped around his neck.

He got hundreds (might be thousands by now) responses. It was very fun reading.
 
It seems to me that the phrase "over-educated " women is misogynist all by itself.

I think the term is best used to describe someone who is working in a job that doesn't use all their potential. But I don't think that is something you can hold against the person. Well... maybe the woman's dad can.
Dad: I told you that getting a philosophy degree at Brown was a waste of money.

Does anyone remember that TV show Wonderfalls? It got cancelled pretty quick but I loved it. The protagonist was an over-educated woman. With a BA in Philosophy from Brown. But working at a gift shop in Niagara Falls. It has a great cast and was created by Brian Fuller - the same guy who did Pushing Daisys and Dead Like Me .

You can watch WonderFalls in YouTube.
 
Women's rights is very popular. Anyone else thing that there is a good chance the GOP is going to shoot themselves in their collective feet.
 
I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and I think that pretty much all of the progress women have made in my lifetime is directly linked to the fact that we had the ability to control our reproductive choices. That made all the difference wrt level of education available, types of professions we could enter, marriage choices, etc. It also made a huge difference in how we perceived ourselves and how others perceived us. It is so terribly depressing that we are going backwards.

And yes, so many other rights are endangered, especially LGBTQ rights, etc. - any rights that aren't "well established" in history. Dreadful.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: PTree15
I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and I think that pretty much all of the progress women have made in my lifetime is directly linked to the fact that we had the ability to control our reproductive choices. That made all the difference wrt level of education available, types of professions we could enter, marriage choices, etc. It also made a huge difference in how we perceived ourselves and how others perceived us. It is so terribly depressing that we are going backwards.

And yes, so many other rights are endangered, especially LGBTQ rights, etc. - any rights that aren't "well established" in history. Dreadful.
Every Ohio republican running for senate has anti trans, racist, pro gun and pro trump and anti womens rights in their ads.
With the latest gerrymanding of districts they will probably win.
and the democrats as they've been, will bow down and become centrists--which is, republican now
 
  • Like
Reactions: KLS52
You should say that too loudly. Get yourself on a no fly list.
But I find it odd that I agree with you on something.
Based on their prior posts I'm not sure who they mean by 'going too far'