Google Puts Free Books on Your Mobile Phone

in Books, e-books, Literature | February 5th, 2009

Wow. Point your mobile web brows­er to books.google.com/m and you can read full books on your portable device. Accord­ing to The Globe and Mail, Google is mak­ing 500,000 books, most from the pub­lic domain, freely avail­able to you. And if you live in the US, the num­ber will reach 1.5 mil­lion. The col­lec­tion includes works by Charles Dick­ens, Jane Austen, Shake­speare, Mil­ton and more. (You can also find many sim­i­lar texts in our col­lec­tion of free audio books.) I test­ed Google’s mobile books on the iPhone, and it looks real­ly good. Hope­ful­ly things will work well on your mobile device as well.

via Maud New­ton’s Twit­ter Feed

get Open Cul­ture’s Twit­ter Feed here.

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Faulkner and Delillo Writing for Sports Illustrated

in Literature | February 4th, 2009

A good find by the LA Times Books Blog that we picked up on Twit­ter: Some­where back in the Sports Illus­trat­ed archive, you’ll find William Faulkn­er writ­ing in 1955 about see­ing his first hock­ey game (the Rangers v. the Mon­tre­al Cana­di­ens at Madi­son Square Gar­den). And then we have Don Delil­lo doing his own piece in 1972, well before he wrote his first big nov­els. Both pieces, by the way, are col­lect­ed in the 2004 book, Fifty Years of Great Writ­ing.

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Inaugural Poet Talks with Stephen Colbert

in Comedy, Literature, Poetry | January 28th, 2009

Eliz­a­beth Alexan­der recit­ed one of her own poems at Oba­ma’s inau­gu­ra­tion last week and now talks poet­ry (both high­brow and low­brow) with Stephen Col­bert. All in all, she does a pret­ty good job of hang­ing in there.

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T.S. Eliot on YouTube

in Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | December 8th, 2008

Michael Gough (I believe) reads the poem that launched T.S. Eliot’s career in 1917, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (get the full text of the poem here)

For more free down­loads of clas­sic audio books and poet­ry, see our com­plete col­lec­tion.

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Vintage Nabokov

in Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | November 12th, 2008

Tak­en from a French tele­vi­sion pro­gram, this vin­tage clip fea­tures Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) read­ing from Loli­ta and reveal­ing his list of the most impor­tant nov­els of the 20th cen­tu­ry, among oth­er things. Nabokov speaks in Eng­lish here. So don’t let the ini­tial French throw you off. We’ve added this gem to our YouTube playlist.

Loli­ta, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue tak­ing a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

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What Makes a Poem a Poem in 60 Seconds

in Literature | October 27th, 2008

A rather clever mini, mini-lec­ture from Charles Bern­stein, poet and pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, would­n’t you say?

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And the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature Goes To …

in Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | October 9th, 2008

You can get more on the author here.

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Now and Then: More Poetry in Motion

in Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | October 1st, 2008

Bil­ly Collins, for­mer US Poet Lau­re­ate and one of Amer­i­ca’s best-sell­ing poets, reads his poem “Now and Then” with ani­ma­tion by Eun-ha Paek of Milky Ele­phant. (Yup, it’s added to our YouTube playlist and also see the pre­vi­ous ani­mat­ed Bil­ly Collins poem.)

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