The Open Library

If you're looking for the best website for free e-books, you probably know of Project Guttenberg already, but Open Library is quickly becoming my favourite.

The reason why I'm starting to prefer Open Library is because beyond giving you the same available formats, the presentation is a lot more friendly and if you decide to read directly from the site the online reader is pretty fantastic and reminds me a lot of comic book viewers in the ease of use (without the need to magnify). There are also a shocking number of titles, complete with illustrations, and it looks just like a book! It will also read to you, which is another bonus if you're like me and get inspired by listening to books you already love while trying to write a book of your own.

Above I posted a YouTube video about OpenLibrary and their mission to give every book their own web page. Be sure to check it out.
You can also, for those of you who use Kindle, send books directly to your Kindle, but as I refuse to own one, I'm not sure how that works entirely or what format you receive the book in. If you use Kindle and send something to it from the Open Library I'd be interested in hearing more.

I'm currently reading W. Somerset Maugham's "The Magician" on OpenLibrary, inspired by the occultist Aleister Crowley. Considering it's a Maugham book I've never read, this site gets 4 stars for awesome in my book!

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Literature Maps

As I began my research (and the tearing apart of La Bibliothéque as I amass books that are relevant) for my Here Be Maps series (for more info on the series, please click here) I found a great site which though it has been around for some time it seems, I didn't know about.

The site, called Gnod is an experiment that uses artifical intelligence with the aim of helping site viewers as a search engine "for things you might not know about". It has several components including music, films, people, and literature.

I clicked on the Gnod Books link and decided to let Gnod teach me a thing or two by entering W. Somerset Maugham, Colette, and Yukio Mishima - three of my favourite authors and was told by Gnod that I should read Junichiro Tanizaki, who I own several books by already.

You are given three choices by Gnod regarding its suggestion: I Like It, I Don't Like It, and I Don't Know It. Since I do like Tanizaki, I clicked I Like It and was referred to read books by Osamu Dazai who I also like, but will pretend for the sake of this experiment that I Don't Like It.

The next suggestion from Gnod was JG Ballard writer of "Crash", which I liked but I haven't enjoyed any of Ballard's other works so at this point I grew skeptical and decided to play with some of the other features of the site.

Now keep in mind because the site most likely takes information from everyone who plays with it and makes the "mapping" connections probably based on this user input. For example nothing would make me personally draw parallels between Patricia Highsmith, author of The Talented Mr. Ripley with Osamu Dazai, but somewhere long before I found this site someone must have.

If you love discovering new authors based on the authors you love (and movies and films) this is a fantastic site. I found several authors linked to W. Somerset Maugham that I would have never considered, but do agree with such as William Stryon (Sophie's Choice, although I don't think it's his best work) and Oswald Splenger (Decline of the West).

I added Kipling myself as Maugham was rather a big fan of his.
There is a book called Maugham on Kipling that is well worth a read.

I've written to Gnod's creator to see if he'd explain more about how the AI works, so if I get a reply I will post in the comments or update via this post if the information is extensive as it would be great to better understand if only to weed out authors that might not be relevant.

Enjoy!

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