Free books (nook) - Barnes & Noble Classics Free Library - Final Week!

[ATDrake]

The final set of the annotated w/extras B&N Classics editions from their summer-long promo has begun to show up, a little early today, since the promo finally ends on the 14th instead of next Friday as usual.

Last week, B&N asked their customers to submit their suggestions for Classics which haven't yet appeared, and it looks like the popular vote goes to:

The Complete Sherlock Holmes volumes I & II
The Iliad & The Odyssey (yay!)
A Tale of Two Cities & Oliver Twist & A Christmas Carol and other tales
The Count of Monte Cristo & The Man in the Iron Mask (double yay!)
Crime and Punishment
Journey to the Centre of the Earth (triple yay!)
Aesop's Fables (whee!)

Hopefully a lot of people will be just as pleased as I am that some of their favourite selections made it to the final 12.

The official Build Your Free Library page will eventually list them all when last week's 12 eventually expire, but until then, you can pick the new ones up early via this "barnes noble classics 0.00" search link.

For those who missed them, last week's set of manly adventures on land and sea (Kipling, Haggard, Twain, etc.) can still be gotten for a limited time. Their system generally switches the old price back over around midnight PDT.

B&N's site is a little glitchy, so be sure to reload from each individual book page to make sure the price is listed at $0.00 before you click. Last week a couple of people on their customer forums got dinged when a promo listing still showed the expired deal.

Or just wait until after 10pm EDT when the new stuff will be practically guaranteed to be the correct price (what I'm going to do; I don't need to really download these right now).

Hopefully, B&N will be running similar Classics promos in the future. It costs them very little, comparatively speaking, but is a great draw for the Nook and helps build up goodwill. I'm certainly feeling much more kindly inclined about B&N than I did a couple of months ago.

And for the well-put-together editions that you get, the current $1.99 price is pretty good, although picking up the rest to go complete the 117 offered free thus far is going to cost rather more than it used to, as they've just added new digital editions, going from a grand total of 183 last week to 204 at current count.

Nice to see they're expanding the line, which certainly deserves it.

[aagstn]

As always thanks for the update. Really good selections this week.

[jhempel24]

Oh sweet, Sherlock Holmes!!!!!

[GreenMonkey]

Sherlock Holmes, Monte Cristo, good stuff this week. The Iliad and the Odyssey might be handy in the future for history classes (although I generally end up with annotated versions). Thanks.

[jangell2]

First time I've used B&N. Couple questions.
1) Can I choose mobi format? and
2) It appears that I have to have and account and I have to enter my credit card number. Is that true?

[texasnightowl]

Originally Posted by jangell2

First time I've used B&N. Couple questions.
1) Can I choose mobi format? and
2) It appears that I have to have and account and I have to enter my credit card number. Is that true?

1. No; if you are on windows they will likely be epub and on macs I believe they will be ereader. B&N does not do mobi.

2. Yes.

[jangell2]

I'm on windows. I guess I could use Calibre to convert them or will these have DRM on them which I don't think Calibre will convert.

[ATDrake]

These will be ePubs (eReader format also available for those downloading from the websites while using a Mac) with B&N's DRM (they use your name and part of your CC number to help encode the files), which is almost trivially easy to remove, if you're comfortable with doing that.

Or you could download any of the free nook apps and read them on your computer/smartphone if you prefer.

Also, when you sign up for an account, they give you three free "starter" B&N Classics (Pride and Prejudice, Dracula, Little Women) which are non-DRM, and convert very nicely to Mobi with no extra steps needed.

[simplyparticular]

Very excited about the Aesop's and Sherlock.

and interesting to know that they added so many more this week. There are a few books I've seen in their Classics series in p-Book that I hadn't seen yet as e-Book.

[ATDrake]

Aesop and Sherlock are especially nice editions. While the actual Fables are naturally very short, the Introduction goes into great lengths into the underlying themes and lessons contained within, and the Inspired By section argues that Orwell's Animal Farm draws a lot from the Aesopian tradition.

And while there are probably even better annotated Holmeses available, given the scholarly popularity and breadth of Sherlockiana, this one is pretty good, even if it doesn't seem to include the original illustrations from the Strand serializations.

But it's got a couple of parodies written by Conan Doyle himself, along with some articles he wrote for some magazine in response to all the uproar after ACD killed Holmes off (he got better). Plus the always helpful notes on Victorian London locales and customs.

As for the added B&N e-Classics, I really think they're trying to achieve title parity with the print editions. Back at the beginning of the promo, there were only 149 or so that I'd counted while trying to figure out how much it would cost to pick up the rest if I wanted to complete the set. Since then, they've added over 50 and apparently there's only a handful left.

Oh, and I should mention that the Iliad and Odyssey, while older translations and probably not the best, do come with very useful notes and explanations which make up for any lack in the poetry/meaning department. Plus the Iliad has a pronunciation guide for accenting the Greek names in the back.

Some of the recent new editions include Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus, the Aeneid, and Bulfinch's Mythology and Machiavelli's The Prince. If B&N should happen to one day do a "(Neo-)Classical Classics" freebie theme week; well, I won't exactly do the dance of joy, but I'll be more than happy to throw extra money at Fictionwise for MultiFormat stuff with a sale/discount coupon before B&N's "management" kills them off entirely.

[jeffcobb]

Originally Posted by jangell2

I'm on windows. I guess I could use Calibre to convert them or will these have DRM on them which I don't think Calibre will convert.

Calibre is pretty nice and is available on all major platforms (Windows/Linux/Mac) and of course is free due to it being open source. Additionally it recognizes the Nook easily and optimizes the ebooks for this platform..

[jangell2]

Originally Posted by jeffcobb

Calibre is pretty nice and is available on all major platforms (Windows/Linux/Mac) and of course is free due to it being open source. Additionally it recognizes the Nook easily and optimizes the ebooks for this platform..

I'd be converting to mobi for the Kindle 3.

[aagstn]

Just read through the essays included in the first volume of Sherlock Holmes and this alone makes the B&N editions worth owning. So much great background on the stories and the author.

I'm probably going to start buying up the rest of these. They are well worth the $1.99 asking price and even $2.99 on some of them.

[indie]

That is a really nice list.