Aphindiwe Novel

[Celedonio Miranda]

If someone tells you that you've come up with a novel idea or a novel interpretation of something, it's probably a compliment: not everyone is capable of original thinking. But not everything new is terribly worthwhile; a novelty, for example, is often a cute (or maybe just silly) little object that you might put on a display shelf in your house. It may seem surprising that the familiar noun novel is related as well. In the 14th century, Italian writers began writing collections of short tales, each of which they called a novella because it represented a new literary form; from this word, three centuries later, the English coined the noun novel.

If you've looked for free books before, you might've noticed that most, though not all, are classics. Older works of literature, essays or plays are classified as public domain, which means the creative work isn't subject to copyright laws. When nobody owns a work, it can be offered for free.

Reading a book online is easy, but downloading a book depends on what device you want to read it on. Apple users can install Apple Books (also known as iBooks) on their iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone. Android users can check out Google Play Books. On both these apps, you can find cheap and free e-books.

Authorama features hundreds of public domain works like Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and more. Just tap the title to launch the book. While the website doesn't let you download to a device, you can read in your mobile or desktop browser.

The only downside with reading on your browser is that there's no way to mark your place. The websites we've compiled allow you to manually enter the page number or search by chapter, though.

Project Gutenberg has more than 58,000 free eBooks. Choose a novel to read online or download on your phone or PC. The book will save as an ePub, Kindle file or plain text in your Dropbox, Google Drive or One Drive. You can also choose to download the file with or without images to save space. If you don't want to download, just choose to read it in your browser in HTML.

Listen in your browser or download the book to your device or PC. You can subscribe on iTunes, through your RSS feed in a podcast app or through Torrent. Similarly, if you prefer to read, the site links back to Project Gutenberg.

ManyBooks offers a selection of classics and contemporary novels. Find the perfect title with dozens of genre filters, language and user ratings. Make a free account and fill out your book preferences.

For a one-time fee, ManyBooks also offers a place for self-publishing authors to house their work and introduce it to a community of avid readers. This is why you might see newer titles available alongside the public domain classics.

Create a free account and plug in your book preferences and reading habits to get started on BookBub. This website is packed with books. Many are free to download, and some are on sale for prices as low as 99 cents. Browse curated genres, follower recommendations, lists or search "free."

When you enter your digital reading preferences, make sure to tap which device you want to read e-books on -- Kindle, Apple Books, Nook, Kobo or Google Play. BookBub will filter available content based on your gadget.

The Goodreads app is a personal favorite of mine. It's a great site to organize your books, see what your favorite authors are reading and find new reads. If you're on the hunt for free e-books, Goodreads can help too.

The Goodreads community creates lists for almost any book need you could have. Finding free books isn't any different. You'll find curated lists of free e-books from indie and self-published authors, public domain classics, audiobooks from Librivox, books for kids, previews, samples and more.

Browse Smashwords' extensive catalog of contemporary and classic fiction, non-fiction, essays, plays and screenplays. Filter what you're looking for by price, special deals and word count. Find the book you want and choose your preferred file format to download it.

It's important to note that you might have to turn on the ability to upload a book if you're using Google Play Books or the iBooks app. If you don't, the files won't work. If you prefer, Smashwords offers the option to read the book on your browser.

Digilibraries has a similar layout to Project Gutenberg. You'll find mostly public domain classics in dozens of categories. Some titles date back to the 1700s, but you can find familiar names like Jack London, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens.

In almost a dating app-style, BookLending "matches" users who can help out with someone else's literary needs. Create an account and either request to borrow a book or offer to lend a book. Almost every book is searchable, and it isn't just public domain material.

To borrow an e-book, search and find the title you want, and tap the orange Borrow button. Once the title becomes available, you'll have seven days to accept the loan and 14 days to read the book. After the 14 days, the e-book will automatically return to the lender. If no one has loaned the book or there is a long list of people who want the book, it could take longer to get the title.

Getting books from your local library isn't old fashioned. If you want the book without leaving your couch or risking a late fee, public library apps are a good alternative. The apps, which often generate digital records of what you borrow, are generally available for Android and iOS with e-books and audiobooks available for rent.

Major libraries like the New York Public Library, the San Diego Library and the Brooklyn Public Library have their own apps. You need to have a card with the library before you can take advantage of the app though. If you're in a smaller town, your local library might be partnered with Hoopla or OverDrive.

Unfortunately, we have forgotten that literature is enjoyable and I fear that too often we distort it when we teach it. Thus the state of New York pays me a comfortable salary to be a professor of literature, but I wonder whether either the legislators or the taxpayers really understand why. I hope that this little book will help to explain why, at least in part by showing how literature delights and how it instructs. I hope, too, that it will inspire other teachers to emphasize the value and delight of reading literature without watering it down, without cheapening it.

For the modern world, the idea of the humanities was revived in the Renaissance, and although there is considerable dispute over what the word meant to the Renaissance humanists, we can say some definite things about it. For example, we know that it was again used to refer primarily to an educational system, in this case a system that developed largely as a reaction to late medieval scholasticism and that emphasized the study of classical Latin and, to a lesser extent, Greek literature. Significantly, an overwhelming majority of Renaissance humanists were educators (most of the rest were statesmen), and consequently they conveyed their program not only through their numerous books and pamphlets, but also through their students.

Yet the idealism of the Renaissance humanists, their concern with human affairs and the higher aspirations of humanity, did little to keep the Renaissance from being a brutal age, and in fact led, by a rather complex process, to the excesses of the Reformation, the Counter-reformation, and the Inquisition. Even so, one of the leading humanist ideas focused on the dignity of humanity, the notion that humans can be either bestial or angelic, but that they have a duty to opt for the latter. Thus, the ideas and ideals of the humanists were good, but the overall program failed. With relatively few exceptions, Renaissance humanism did little to make human beings better, despite a lasting influence on education, which continued to emphasize the Greek and Latin classics until the twentieth century. At the same time, precisely because it was an ideal, it was bound to fail: ideals are things we strive toward, not necessarily things we accomplish. It is the striving that makes us better.

The teacher of literature has to remember why he or she entered the field of literature. The motivation was likely a love of words and of stories and of what good writers can do with words and stories. That sense is what we have to convey. When I see a good play in a baseball game, I call whoever might be home to watch the replay; or when I hear a new piece of music, I invite someone to listen with me. I want to share my enjoyment. So, too, with literature. I love The Iliad. It provides both aesthetic and intellectual enjoyment, and I want to share that enjoyment with my students.

The same thing is true for readers of literature. Generally authors want to communicate with their readers, so they are not likely to hide or disguise what they are saying, but reading literature also requires some training and some practice. Good writers use language very carefully, and readers must learn how to be sensitive to that language, just as the mechanic must learn to be sensitive to the appearances and sounds of the engine. Everything that the writer wants to say, and much that the writer may not be aware of, is there in the words. We simply have to learn how to read them.

Reading also forces us to focus our thoughts. The world around us is so full of stimuli that we are easily distracted. Unless we are involved in a crisis that demands our full attention, we flit from subject to subject. But when we read a book, even a book that has a large number of characters and covers many years, the story and the writing help us to focus, to think about what they show us in a concentrated manner. In this sense, too, a book is like a world. When I hold a book, I often feel that I have in my hand another world that I can enter and that will help me to understand the everyday world that I inhabit. Though it may sound funny, some of my best friends live in books, and no matter how frequently I visit them, each time I learn more about them and about myself. And if what I have just said is true about narratives, it is even more intensely true about poetry, which is often a more intense form of literary creation.

c80f0f1006