If you're someone like me who is always reading and always looking for a new book, you will find that it is very expensive to keep buying more and more books to read. It can also get annoying to try and lug around big books everywhere you go. A solution to both of these problems is reading books online. Here are 5 websites to read books online for free (or mostly free).
1. Project Gutenberg.
This website has over 58,000 ebooks for free and is also available on mobile. This is probably one of the best places to find classics, as it publishes books whose copyright has expired. The site allows you to download the HTML and read it online. The only downside of this is that it is basically a bunch of words in a new tab without page numbers or anything. Due to this, I prefer reading shorter stories or poems on this site.
2. Amazon Kindle.
This is one of those that is sort of free. If you have Amazon Prime (and I mean, who doesn't) you also have a bunch of free Kindle books. This site also has a lot of books whose copyright has expired, but also a lot of more obscure books. The upside to this one is that the books are separated into pages like proper ebooks, so you are able to open and close the app or window without losing your place.
3. The Library of Congress.
Again, this is full of classics, but also has books on art and music. As I write this article, however, the site is down, something that seems to happen quite a bit with government websites. This is probably your best bet if you want to find books that are a bit more obscure or if you want to find more reference books.
4. Smashwords.
This site doesn't have as many classics as the other sites, but it does include a large number of amateur books as well as abridged copies of classics. This site also features a lot of books in other languages which is nice if you are trying to learn how to read or speak another language!
5. Internet Archive.
This site is one of the larger resources. They offer about the same amount of online books as Project Gutenberg, but they also function similar to a library. With a free account, you are able to "check-out" books. This means that you get a copy of an ebook, but rules similar to that of libraries apply. You might have to join a waitlist for books and you can only have them for 2 weeks at a time. This site offers a wide range of books, including textbooks and reference books. The site also has recordings of newscasts and live concerts, among other things.
Once you realize just how many books there are out there to read, you realize how much it would cost to read all of the ones you want to. However, using these 5 sites, as well as many other online resources, you can discover just how accessible some books are. So, go out there, do some research, and find something to read!
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