Ten random public domain freebies
One of the things people say they miss when shopping online is that sense of random discovery you get in a physical store.
When you go online, you tend to search for something specific.
When you walk in a store, you never know what you’ll find. Heck, they might even have changed where the sections are.
That was especially true of used bookstores. I loved finding some obscure old title…the kind you couldn’t figure out how it ever got published in the first place.
Alternatively, maybe it was something that was clearly popular at one time.
The point is, you never quite knew what you’d see.
So, I decided to replicate that experience.
When you do a search at Amazon, you can only see 400 results.
I used
http://www.ereaderiq.com/search/
to limit my search to free public domain titles, and to rank the results by popularity.
Next, I used
http://www.random.org/integers/
to find me ten random numbers from 1 to 400.
The books below are the results of that search…have fun wandering down the aisle! 
Beauty and the Beast
by unknown
This is a short version of the fairy tale. It’s possible it was illustrated, but it isn’t here.
The Souls of Black Folk
by W.E.B. Dubois
An important classic
Faust
by Goethe
Politics: A Treatise on Government
by Aristotle
The Valley of Fear
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A Sherlock Holmes story
The Religion of the Ancient Celts
by J.A. MacCulloch
Intentions
by Oscar Wilde
A collection of four essays…I got this one for my vacation
Oedipus Trilogy
by Sophocles
Old Greek Stories
by James Baldwin
Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
by Jules Verne
Hm…I don’t think I’ve read this one! It involves a trip down the Amazon, and I’ve been there before. I’m taking this one on vacation, too!
Well, I must say…I enjoyed that! I do like doing things with a plan, but I love improvising, and this sort of combined the two (I’d planned to find random titles).
If you’d like me to do this again, feel free to let me know.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
March 13, 2012 at 7:10 pm |
What fun! I hope you will do this again. Also hope you’re enjoying your vacation!
March 13, 2012 at 9:33 pm |
Thanks for writing, Jane!
Great! It was fun to do…I’ll probably do it again.
The vacation is fun…and tiring! My Significant Other likes to walk, and my kid is…well, college-aged. I think we have literally walked more than five miles every day, all over the city.
One goal for the trip was to find my kid an apartment…and that was accomplished on the first possible day! I was figuring at least a couple of days of apartment hunting…which would have been physically easier.
They like to walk: I like to type.
March 14, 2012 at 1:31 am |
Great fun! My kid (not college age, but quite a reader
) is thrilled to have a new Jules Verne to read!! Enjoy your vacation!
March 14, 2012 at 10:14 am |
Thanks so writing, Kay!
Thanks so much for letting me know! I’m looking forward to that Verne myself, although I’ve noticed some of the reviewers think it has too much detail. I’m probably going to love that detail.
I’d be happy to read a whole chapter on sloth’s toes, for example.
March 14, 2012 at 1:35 am |
BTW – I found ereaderiq from your blog – and today bought a book I’ve been wanted to read for a while – for $1.99!!! Serena, by Ron Rash – a local gent who teaches at the local college, and the setting is this area (though chronologically a few years back
). The book was highly recommended by several friends and has been on my wish list for a while! As soon as I finish my current KOLL book, I’m starting it!
March 14, 2012 at 10:15 am |
Thanks for writing again, Kay!
Excellent! I hope it meets your expectations!
March 15, 2012 at 2:40 pm |
please do that again! that was fun!
March 30, 2012 at 1:31 pm |
[...] opening a book and reading it a bit to see if you like it. If my random search returns a title from the previous post, I’ll randomize [...]