Year of Reading #1

In a good year, I read about 100 books. So here are 100 excellent books that I'd recommend. Most of these are relatively short. Many are collections of short stories and poetry. I've avoided plays and reference books, aiming for books that should work well for people who listen to books (using text-to-voice conversion programs) rather than reading them on a computer screen. See the complete table of contents below.

Intended for use with Windows PCs and recent Macs (OS X), these books are in plain-text format, organized for easy access.

Year of Reading #1 100$19.00

You can see the complete table of contents below. Please use the Find function in your browser (under Edit) to look for a specific author or book. You can see suggestions on how to get the most out of your plain-text books on CD ROM at our home Web site. Use the back button on your browser to return here.

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Questions? If Richard Seltzer, who created this CD, is online now, you can chat with him immediately by clicking on his photo (below). If he is offline, you can send him an email by clicking on his photo.

Would you like a free sample?Send me email at seltzer@samizdat.com and I'll email you the "ebook of the week" as a plain text file attachment, so you can see what it's like to read a plain text book on your computer screen.

Important facts about this book collection on CD

• text not audio on CD, for use on Windows PCs and recent Macs (OS X), not on music CD players
  • if you would like to multi-task (listening to books on an IPOD or MP3 music player), you can, at low cost, buy TextAloud software that converts these plain-text book files to MP3 files. For details, see http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat/multitasking.html
  • if you would like to listen to the books on your PC, with machine voices, you could buy ReadPlease software. For details, see http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat/readplease.html
• no illustrations
• no page numbers
  • instead of using page numbers, you can search through the text of a single book using the Find function in Word, IE, or whatever other application you use to read the book; or you can search across all the content of all the books -- for that, we recommend copying books from CD or DVD to your hard drive and then using free MSN desktop search http://desktop.msn.com/ for fast and accurate results
• for the latest news on our book collections on CD and DVD, and to post your suggestions and comments, please check our blog http://www.samizdat.com/blog
  • If you haven't "blogged" before, have no fear. I'm new to it, too; and it's ridiculously easy. The word is short for "Web log." It's just a Web page consisting of relatively short items, which gets frequently updated with new material, and where readers can easily add their reactions. It's a Web space to come back to again and again, like a favorite TV show you tune in often. I try to post at least one new item a day. The main topics are books, Internet business, and "off-the-wall" ideas of mine.

What do we mean by "plain text books"? Many people ask that question --

Plain text (also known as ASCII) is the simplest form of text prepared for use on a computer -- without any of the formatting that is usually specific to a specific program.

Using a plain text book is the same as reading any plain text file on your computer. You can open a plain text document with your Web browser or with a word processor like Word. Then you can use the power of that specific application to modify how the text appears to suit your individual preferences.

For example, go to http://www.samizdat.com/iraq.txt with your browser. If you are using Microsoft's Internet Explorer as a browser, then click on View and on Text Size and see how that book looks with different type sizes. If you had that book on one of our CDs (it appears on our "Middle East: Context for Conflict"), you could open it with Word and then change font or type size as you would with any other document, if you wish (I keep the default myself). You also could copy the book to your hard drive and save any formatting changes that you make or enter and save notes, or enter and save markers to remind you where you last left off reading, etc. There are many possibilities.

To practice what you can do with plain text on your hard drive, save that Iraq file as text and then experiment with the file on your hard drive. (That file is the Library of Congress Country Study of Iraq, from my CD "The Middle East: Context for Conflict". There's also a CD on Africa.)

Why read a book on a computer?

1) It's easy to curl up with a laptop (just a matter of habit).

2) You can set the type whatever size you want, so there's less eye strain than with a paper book (unless you are set up with extraordinary glare conditions). I need to use reading glasses to read a paper book, but don't to read one on my computer.

3) I actually find that I read about 50% faster this way.

4) These CDs come with sample text-to-voice software (ReadPlease). You can try it for a month to check the quality (which I found surprisingly good), and to see if your kids feel comfortable with it. Then if you like the software, you can get a license for it -- to read any text on your computer, not just the files on the CD -- for $49.95 (I believe).

5) If you travel long distances or frequently, it's a lot easier to take along a few CDs than boxes full of printed books.

All in all, it's a matter of personal taste and habit. If you think this might be for you, give it a try.

Table of Contents

Major sections of this CD:

• Novels
• Short Stories
• Poetry
• Biography
• Essays
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Religion

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Table of Contents

Intended for use with Windows PCs and recent Macs (OS X), this Hobbies CD with 100 classic books in plain text form sells for $19 at our online store.

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Novels

Jane Austen

• Emma

Joseph Conrad

• Lord Jim

Daniel Defoe

• Moll Flanders

Charles Dickens

• A Christmas Carol

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

• Herland

Thomas Hardy

• Tess of the d'Urbevilles

G.A. Henty

• Lion of the North
• Won by the Sword

Henry James

• The Aspern Papers
• Daisy Miller
• The Turn of the Screw

Jack London

• Call of the Wild
• Martin Eden

Mary Shelley

• Frankenstein

Bram Stoker

• Dracula

Mark Twain

• Pudd'nhead Wilson

Edith Wharton

• Ethan Frome

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Short Story Collections

Multi-Author Collections

• Best Russian Short Stories

Hans Christian Andersen

Fairy Tales

• The Emperor's New Clothes
• The Swineherd
• The Real Princess
• The Shoes of Fortune
• The Fir Tree
• The Snow Queen
• The Leap-Frog
• The Elderbush
• The Bell
• The Old House
• The Happy Family
• The Story of a Mother
• The False Collar
• The Shadow
• The Little Match Girl
• The Dream of Little Tuk
• The Naughty Boy
• The Red Shoes

Sherwood Anderson

• Winesburg Ohio

Honore de Balzac

Volume 1

Translator's Preface

Prologue

The Fair Imperia

The Venial Sin

The King's Sweetheart

The Devil's Heir

The Merrie Jests of King Louis XI

The High Constable's Wife

The Maid of Thilouse

The Brothers-in-Arms

The Vicar of Azay-Le-Rideau

The Reproach

Ambrose Bierce

Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories

• The Ways of Ghosts
• Present at a Hanging
• A Cold Greeting
• A Wireless Message
• An Arrest
• Soldier-Folk
• A Man with Two Lives
• Three and One are One
• A Baffled Ambuscade
• Two Military Executions
• Some Haunted Houses
• The Isle of Pines
• A Fruitless Assignment
• A Vine on a House
• At Old Man Eckert's
• The Spook House
• The Other Lodgers
• The Thing at Nolan
• Mysterious Disappearances
• The Difficulty of Crossing a Field
• An Unfinished Race
• Charles Ashmore's Trail
• Science to the Front

Anton Chekhov

Volume 11, The Schoolmaster and Other Stories, translated by Constance Garnett

• THE SCHOOLMASTER
• ENEMIES
• THE EXAMINING MAGISTRATE
• BETROTHED
• FROM THE DIARY OF A VIOLENT-TEMPERED MAN
• IN THE DARK
• A PLAY
• A MYSTERY
• STRONG IMPRESSIONS
• DRUNK
• THE MARSHAL'S WIDOW
• A BAD BUSINESS
• IN THE COURT
• BOOTS
• JOY
• LADIES
• A PECULIAR MAN
• AT THE BARBER'S
• AN INADVERTENCE
• THE ALBUM
• OH! THE PUBLIC
• A TRIPPING TONGUE
• OVERDOING IT
• THE ORATOR
• MALINGERERS
• IN THE GRAVEYARD
• HUSH!
• IN AN HOTEL
• IN A STRANGE LAND

Kate Chopin

• The Awakening and Selected Short Stories
• The Awakening
• Beyond the Bayou
• Desiree's Baby
• The Kiss
• The Locket
• Ma'ame Pelagie
• A Pair of Stockings
• A Reflection
• A Respectable Woman

Alphonse Daudet

• Tartarin of Tarascon, translated to English by Olvier C. Colt

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

• A Scandal in Bohemia
• The Red-Headed League
• A Case of Identity
• The Boscombe Valley Mystery
• The Five Orange Pips
• The Man with the Twisted Lip
• The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
• The Adventure of the Speckled Band
• The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb
• The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
• The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
• The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Tales of the Jazz Age
• Introduction
• My Last Flappers
• The Jelly-Bean
• The Camel's Back
• May Day
• Porcelain and Pink
• Fantasies
• The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Tarquin of Cheapside
• "O Russet Witch!"
• Unclassified Masterpieces
• The Lees of Happiness
• Mr. Icky
• Jemina

Gustave Flaubert

• A Simple Soul

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

• The Yellow Wallpaper
• Herland

Nicolai Gogol

Taras Bulba and Other Stories

• Introduction by John Cournos
• Taras Bulba
• St. John's Eve
• The Cloak
• How the Two Ivans Quarrelled
• The Mysterious Portrait
• The Calash

Joel Chandler Harris

• Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings
• LEGENDS OF THE OLD PLANTATION
• I. Uncle Remus initiates tbe Little Boy
• II. The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story
• III.Why Mr. Possum loves Peace
• IV. How Mr. Rabbit was too sharp for Mr. Fox
• V. The Story of the Deluge, and how it came about
• VI. Mr. Rabbit grossly deceives Mr. Fox
• VII. Mr. Fox is again victimized .
• VIII. Mr. Fox is "outdone" by Mr. Buzzard
• IX. Miss Cow falls a Victim to Mr. Rabbit
• X. Mr. Terrapin appears upon the Scene
• XI. Mr. Wolf makes a Failure
• XII. Mr. Fox tackles Old Man Tarrypin
• XIII. The Awful Fate of Mr. Wolf
• XIV. Mr. Fox and the Deceitful Frogs .  .
• XV. Mr. Fox goes a-hunting, but Mr. Rabbit bags the Game
• XVl. Old Mr. Rabbit, he's a Good Fisherman
• XVJI. Mr. Rabbit nibbles up the Butter
• XVIII. Mr. Rabbit finds his Match at last
• XIX. The Fate of Mr. Jack Sparrow
• XX. How Mr. Rabbit saved his Meat
• XXI. Mr. Rabbit meets his Match again
• XXII. A Story about the Little Rabbits
• XXIII. Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Bear .
• XXIV. Mr. Bear catches Old Mr. Bull-Frog
• XXV. How Mr. Rabbit lost his Fine Bushy Tail
• XXVI. Mr. Terrapin shows his Strength.
• XXVII Why Mr. Possum has no Hair on his Tail
• XXVIII. The End of Mr. Bear .
• XXIX. Mr. Fox gets into Serious Business
• XXX. How Mr. Rabbit succeeded in raising a Dust.
• XXXI. A Plantation Witch
• XXXII. "Jacky-my- Lanteern"
• XXXIII. Why the Negro is Black
• XXXIV.-The Sad Fate of Mr. Fox

Bret Harte

The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales

• Publisher's Note
• Author's Introduction
• The Luck of Roaring Camp
• The Outcasts of Poker Flat
• Miggles
• Tennessee's Partner
• The Idyl of Bed Gulch
• Brown of Calaveras
• Condensed Novels:
• Muck-A-Muck: A Modern Indian Novel
• Selina Sedilia
• The Ninety-Nine Guardsmen
• Miss Mix
• Mr. Midshipman Breezy: A Naval Officer
• Guy Heavystone; Or, "Entire:" A Muscular Novel
• John Jenkins; Or, The Smoker Reformed
• Fantine. After The French Of Victor Hugo
• "La Femme." After The French Of M. Michelet
• The Dweller Of The Threshold
• N. N.: Being A Novel In The French Paragraphic Style
• No Title
• Handsome Is As Handsome Does
• Lothaw; Or, The Adventures Of A Young Gentleman In Search Of A Religion
• The Haunted Man: A Christmas Story
• Terence Denville
• Mary Mcgillup
• The Hoodlum Band; Or, The Boy Chief, The Infant Politician, And The Pirate Prodigy
• Earlier Sketches
• M'liss: An Idyl Of Red Mountain
• A Lonely Ride
• The Man Of No Account
• Notes By Flood And Field
• Waiting For The Ship: A Fort Point Idyl
• A Night At Wingdam
• Spanish and American Legends
• The Legend Of Monte Del Diablo
• The Right Eye Of The Commander
• The Legend Of Devil's Point
• The Adventure Of Padre Vicentio: A Legend Of San Francisco
• The Devil And The Broker: A Medieval Legend
• The Ogress Of Silver Land; Or, The Diverting History
• Of Prince Badfellah And Prince Bulleboye
• The Christmas Gift That Came To Rupert: A Story For Little Soldiers

Nathaniel Hawthorne

• From Mosses from an Old Manse
• The Birthmark
• Young Goodman Brown
• Rappaccini's Daughter
• Mrs. Bullfrog
• The Celestial Railroad
• The Procession of Life
• Feathertop: A Moralized Legend
• Egotism; or, The Bosom Serpent
• Drowne's Wooden Image
• Roger Malvin's Burial
• The Artist of the Beautiful

O. Henry

• The Four Million
• Tobin's Palm
• The Gift of the Magi
• A Cosmopolite in a Cafe
• Between Rounds
• The Skylight Room
• A Service of Love
• The Coming-Out of Maggie
• Man about Town
• The Cop and the Anthem
• An Adjustment of Nature
• Memoirs of a Yellow Dog
• The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein
• Mammon and the Archer
• Springtime a la Carte
• The Green Door
• From the Cabby's Seat
• An Unfinished Story
• The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock
• Sisters of the Golden Circle
• The Romance of a Busy Broker
• After Twenty Years
• Lost on Dress Parade
• By Courier
• The Furnished Room
• The Brief Debut of Tildy

Washington Irving

• The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
• Preface
• The Author's Account of Himself
• The Voyage
• Roscoe
• The Wife
• Rip Van Winkle
• English Writers on America
• Rural Life in England
• The Broken Heart
• The Art of Book-making
• A Royal Poet
• The Country Church
• The Widow and her Son
• A Sunday in London
• The Boar's Head Tavern
• The Mutability of Literature
• Rural Funerals
• The Inn Kitchen
• The Spectre Bridegroom
• Westminster Abbey
• Christmas
• The Stage-Coach
• Christmas Eve
• Christmas Day
• The Christmas Dinner
• London Antiques
• Little Britain
• Statford-on-Avon
• Traits of Indian Character
• Philip of Pokanoket

Jack London

Call of the Wild

Martin Eden

South Sea Tales

• The House of Mapuhi
• The Whale Tooth
• Mauki
• "Yah! Yah! Yah!"
• The Heathen
• The Terrible Solomons
• The Inevitable White Man
• The Seed of McCoy

Guy de Maupassant

• Complete Short Stories
• Volume 4
• The Moribund
• The Gamekeeper
• The Story of a Farm Girl
• The Wreck
• Theodule Sabot's Confession
• The Wrong House
• The Diamond Necklace
• The Marquis de Fumerol
• The Trip of the Horla
• Farewell
• The Wolf
• The Inn

Herman Melville

• Piazza Tales

Edgar Allan Poe

• Volume 5 of the Raven Edition of his works
• Philosophy of Furniture
• A Tale of Jerusalem
• The Sphinx
• Hop Frog
• The Man of the Crowd
• Never Bet the Devil Your Head
• Thou Art the Man
• Why the Little Frenchman Wears his Hand in a Sling
• Bon-Bon
• Some words with a Mummy

Leo Tolstoy

The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories

• Translator's Preface
• The Kreutzer Sonata
• Ivan the Fool
• A Lost Opportunity
• Polikushka
• The Candle

Mark Twain

• The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg
• The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg
• My First Lie, and How I Got Out of IT
• The Esquimaux Maiden's Romance
• Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy
• Is He Living or Is He Dead?
• My Debut as a Literary Person
• At the Appetite-Cure
• Concerning the Jews
• From the 'London Times' of 1904
• About Play-Acting
• Travelling with a Reformer
• Diplomatic Pay and Clothes
• Luck
• The Captain's Story
• Stirring Times in Austria
• My Military Campaign
• Meisterschaft
• My Boyhood Dreams
• To the Above Old People
• In Memoriam -- Olivia Susan Clemens
• The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories
• The $30,000 Bequest
• A Dog's Tale
• Was It Heaven?  Or Hell?
• A Cure for the Blues
• The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant
• The Californian's Tale
• A Helpless Situation
• A Telephonic Conversation
• Edward Mills and George Benton:  A Tale
• The Five Boons of Life
• The First Writing-Machines
• Italian without a Master
• Italian with Grammar
• A Burlesque Biography
• How to Tell a Story
• General Washington's Negro Body-servant
• Wit Inspirations of the "Two-year-olds"
• An Entertaining Article
• A Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury
• Amended Obituaries
• A Monument to Adam
• A Humane Word from Satan
• Introduction to "The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English"
• Advice to Little Girls
• Post-mortem Poetry
• The Danger of Lying in Bed
• Portrait of King William III
• Does the Race of Man Love a Lord?
• Extracts from Adam's Diary
• Eve's Diary

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Poetry

Matthew Arnold

• Sobral and Rustum and Other Poems

William Blake

• Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

• Sonnets from the Portuguese

Robert Browning

• Dramatic Lyrics

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• The Ancient Mariner and Select Poems

Dante

• The Divine Comedy (translated by Longfellow)

Emily Dickinson

• Series 1
• Series 2
• Series 3

John Keats

• Poems 1817

Edward Lear

• Book of Nonsense

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• Evangeline
• Dante's The Divine Comedy (translated by Longfellow)

Edgar Lee Masters

• Spoon River Anthology

John Milton

• Poetical Works

Edgar Allan Poe

• Complete Poetical Works

Alexander Pope

• Essay on Man

Willliam Shakespeare

• Sonnets

Robert Louis Stevenson

• A Child's Garden of Verse

Alfred Lord Tennyson

• The Idylls of the King

Francis Thompson

• Poems

Walt Whitman

• Leaves of Grass

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Lyrical Ballads Volume 1
• Lyrical Ballads Volume 2

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Biography

Helen Keller

• Story of My Life

Booker T. Washington

• Up from Slavery

Frederick Douglass

• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Nat Turner

• Confessions of Nat Turner

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Essays

Addison and Steele

• Essays and Tales

Sir Francis Bacon

• Essays

W.E.B. DuBois

• The Souls of Black Folk

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Essays Series 1
• Essays Series 2
• Representative Men

Desiderius Erasmus

• The Praise of Folly

Michel de Montaigne

• Essays volume 1

Henry David Thoreau

• On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
• Walden

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Philosophy

Aritstotle

• Poetics

Marcus Aurelius

• Meditations

Boethius

• The Consolation of Philosophy

Rene Descartes

• Discourse on the Method

John Dewey

• Democracy and Education

William James

• Pragmatism
• Varieties of Religious Experience

Friedrick Nietzsche

• Thus Spake Zarathustra

Plato

• Apology
• Euthyphro
• Republic

Arthur Schopenauer

• Essays

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Political Science

Niccolo Machiavelli

• Discourses
• The Prince

John Stuart Mill

• Utilitarianism

Sun Tzu

• The Art of War

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Religion

Collections

• Hebraic Literature (translations from the Talmud, Midrashim, and Kabbala)

Confucius

Analects

Lao Tzu

• The Tao

Moses Maimonies

• The Guide for the Perplexed

Ernest Renan

• The Life of Jesus

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