Some Interesting Websites

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine, who is another Avid Reader, gave me the URL of one of her favourite websites: http://manybooks.net//. As its name hints, it the home of many books - digitised, out-of-copyright books. Most of them would not find audiences large enough to bear the cost of republishing in hard copy, except by the occasional specialist press, but are still fun reads. I've been browsing by genre (mystery and science fiction) and at the moment am dipping into The Girl in the Golden Atom by Ray Cummings (1923):


"Then I became aware of a dim shape in the foreground--a shape merged with the outlines surrounding it. And as I looked, it gradually assumed form, and I saw it was the figure of a young girl, sitting beside the liquid pool. Except for the same waviness of outline and phosphorescent glow, she had quite the normal aspect of a human being of our own world. She was beautiful, according to our own standards of beauty; her long braided hair a glowing black, her face, delicate of feature and winsome in expression. Her lips were a deep red, although I felt rather than saw the colour.

"She was dressed only in a short tunic of a substance I might describe as gray opaque glass, and the pearly whiteness of her skin gleamed with iridescence.

"She seemed to be singing, although I heard no sound. Once she bent over the pool and plunged her hand into it, laughing gaily.

"Gentlemen, I cannot make you appreciate my emotions, when all at once I remembered I was looking through a microscope. I had forgotten entirely my situation, absorbed in the scene before me. And then, abruptly, a great realization came upon me--the realization that everything I saw was inside that ring. I was unnerved for the moment at the importance of my discovery.

As it was payday today I also hied me to my two favourite online bookstores: http://www.betterworldbooks.com/ and http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/. The Book Depository is located in the UK, and will send books to you without charging postage almost anywhere in the world - which is definitely a consideration when you live in Australia. Better World Books is located in the US, and offers free postage within the country and very low postage elsewhere. It sells both new and secondhand books, some fairly hard to find, and the proceeds go to literacy projects around the world. In other words it offers me a chance to do good while indulging myself!