Quality Books

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sonist

Well, that would be me

If there was a large format reader, with full PDF support, including hyperlinks, search and dictionary, I'd be all over it, and will buy only PDF books.

And so will most of the sane, non design-challenged, world.

Er, there is. It's called the iRex DR1000S, and supports everything that you describe.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Er, there is. It's called the iRex DR1000S, and supports everything that you describe.

True....

But I am not a fan of stylus operation (prefer fingers.)

Also, in my previous experience, the build-quality of iRex was subpar to that of the Kindle or Sony.

Then there is the shortish battery life.

Finally, I am not enamored by the way the DR1000 looks.

A few too many cons on my list. So I am waiting to see what Sony does with their big screen (or possibly Aztak, if their design doesn't suck.)

[HarryT]

There's actually very few things on the DR1000 that you have to use the stylus for (dictionary lookup is one); most normal operations can be done using the keys.

The build quality of the DR1000 is vastly better than that of the iLiad.

[geneven]

I'm tempted to start a site focusing on classics available for e-reading (and maybe audiobooks too), now that you have mentioned it. There is at least one site that specialized in off-the-beaten-tracks classics, but I can't remember its name now.

I just read Little Women for the first time, on my Kindle. That was quite an experience, I thought. For Jane Austen I can't recommend the Republic of Pemberly web site enough, though there are many great Jane Austen sites. Instead of looking for general discussions of classics, maybe you should find writers that interest you and look for sites that discuss them.

As a randomish aside -- I had a revelation after participating in a great books discussion list for quite awhile. I decided that I mainly cared what I thought about books and not what anyone else thought very much. It's because reading great books is mainly a personal exploration for me, and what I get out of them is what interests me, even if it's wrong!

[Ea]

What about Feedbooks.com and Manybooks.net? It's all free and public domain stuff, but it's not all pulp (I think). Feedbooks formatting seem resonably okay to me, and both sites offers customised PDFs.

I make customised PDFs, too. With some of the source material I have, it's simply the easiest way to get a nice looking book, and I don't have a need to be able to change font size.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There's actually very few things on the DR1000 that you have to use the stylus for (dictionary lookup is one); most normal operations can be done using the keys.

The build quality of the DR1000 is vastly better than that of the iLiad.

The new firmware with the tabs looks really good.

I am tempted, because I hear only good things about the DR1000, but I am really hoping someone comes up with a large-screen, finger touch device soon, which would be the perfect one for me.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by ahi

Are there any eBook websites that specialize in established classical and contemporary writers and offer professional quality eBooks therefrom?

It seems to me that on any given website the bulk of the material is from virtual unknowns... not to mention that genre/theme preferences seem very heavily weighed in favour of what I would categorize as "pulp fiction" of mostly predictable varieties.

Walk into a Brick and Mortar store lately? I think you will find mostly the same thing. About 2 months ago I went into a Borders near my house and was shocked to find they had barely any Patrick O'Brian... The general fiction section was tiny, and even when you added the shelves of genre fiction to the mix, I think it was safe to say that offerings were inadequate.

I'm not against new authors being given a chance and/or more exposure than in the paper book market/world... but now and then I am driven to despair by how little I can find from collections of thousands of books that actually interest me. In contrast, Project Gutenberg and the Hungarian Electronic Library and treasure troves... but with both of those, I have to do my own formatting and, while there is much of interest, both organization's selection is limited in its own way.

- Ahi

I agree with others that say that PG has gotten a lot better. As long as books added to PG are formatted the way PG has asked them to be (in the text files), it is actually pretty easy to reformat them. In fact, I wrote a relatively short Perl Script that reformatts PG books so that they look like regular text on my jetbook.

--
Bill

[LDBoblo]

What irks me about a lot of Gutenberg stuff is that many of my favorite books are in unformatted text files. I won't use their layout formatting, but it'd be nice to retain italics and perhaps some of the bolds.

One thing that has bothered me is that I've been reading a bunch of books where one or more characters speaks in caps. Properly reformatting it all to smallcaps is such a nasty burden.

I guess I too am yearning for some kind of resource for quality e-literature. Then again, after reformatting Pride and Prejudice several times for my reader, I just went and bought a lovely paperback at the bookstore instead. The digital version just feels diminished in some way...though I'm not precisely sure how, beyond simple tangibility. Could be typographic constraints, but I'm not sure that's it. Perhaps it's just hard to take them seriously since nobody else seems to (look at how some of these classics are bundled up badly and regurgitated as book deals to promote products and services).

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

What irks me about a lot of Gutenberg stuff is that many of my favorite books are in unformatted text files. I won't use their layout formatting, but it'd be nice to retain italics and perhaps some of the bolds.

Well I think we need to keep in mind that PG has been running for over 35 years. And part of its goal is to make sure works are available in a format that literally can be read on any computerized device (Even if the resulting text might look very ugly).

I hope you do recognize that many of the works now come in alternate formats including html and epub... at least some of these have more advanced formatting present in them.

One thing that has bothered me is that I've been reading a bunch of books where one or more characters speaks in caps. Properly reformatting it all to smallcaps is such a nasty burden.

I guess I too am yearning for some kind of resource for quality e-literature. Then again, after reformatting Pride and Prejudice several times for my reader, I just went and bought a lovely paperback at the bookstore instead. The digital version just feels diminished in some way...though I'm not precisely sure how, beyond simple tangibility. Could be typographic constraints, but I'm not sure that's it. Perhaps it's just hard to take them seriously since nobody else seems to (look at how some of these classics are bundled up badly and regurgitated as book deals to promote products and services).

Well, there is a certain something about a paper book... its really hard to quantify, but its there... so I imagine there will always be a market for paper books, just like vinyl records have not completely faded away in the music business.

--
Bill

[HarryT]

One of the problems with PG is that in its early years, books were hand-typed, and not unnaturally, the books that people wanted first tended to be the real classics. Consequently there are some really well-known books on PG which are in an absolutely shocking state.

A good example is Dickens' "The Old Curiosity Shop". Having created the version that you can download from here originally from the PG text, I spent several months proofing it line-by-line against a good printed edition. and found, amongst other things, two complete double pages of text which were entirely missing from the PG version, many other less egrarious omissions (several whole paragraphs, numerous lines), and many, many thousands of more minor errors. And it's that PG edition that virtually all the commercial eBooks of "The Old Curiosity Shop" are created from.

The version that you can now download from MR - the fully-proofed one - is now in a pretty good state, and should rival any printed edition for accuracy.

This is why I have always maintained that there are no shortcuts for good eBook creation. You HAVE to proof-read, and that's a process which takes hundreds of hours of work for a single book.

[WillAdams]

I think it's Jose Menendez has made some very nice ebooks:

http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/

William

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A good example is Dickens' "The Old Curiosity Shop". Having created the version that you can download from here originally from the PG text, I spent several months proofing it line-by-line against a good printed edition. and found, amongst other things, two complete double pages of text which were entirely missing from the PG version, many other less egrarious omissions (several whole paragraphs, numerous lines), and many, many thousands of more minor errors. And it's that PG edition that virtually all the commercial eBooks of "The Old Curiosity Shop" are created from.

I hope you contributed your corrections back to PG.

[HarryT]

I sent them an e-mail asking if they'd like to have it, but never got a reply. They are of course very welcome to have it.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Well I think we need to keep in mind that PG has been running for over 35 years. And part of its goal is to make sure works are available in a format that literally can be read on any computerized device (Even if the resulting text might look very ugly).

I hope you do recognize that many of the works now come in alternate formats including html and epub... at least some of these have more advanced formatting present in them.

One that I just got from PG the other day was Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which unfortunately was in a pretty sorry state. Granted, I didn't get to see the mobi or epub versions, but the html was unfortunate. Lucky for me, there was another resource on the internet that had the text, though I'm not sure of its correctness or completeness (as Harry pointed out). At least it had some italics, which was a relief. Just had to delete all the images and page numbers.

Saw it at the bookstore under the Penguin Red Classics logo and considered picking it up, but it's one I keep putting back down after some careful thought. There are a bunch of classics that I thought valuable enough to stomach a reading on the ebook reader, but not quite valuable enough to purchase in a real format. Besides, their Dante typesetting, while consistent and good looking on decent paper, isn't really what I think ideal for reading something like Huck Finn.