I was in a friend’s office some time ago. In his secondary school days, this friend was like me – addicted to novels. The ornithological specimen of identical plummage invariably consummate together with greatest proximity. Meaning? Birds of the same feathers…
Reading James Hadley Chase, Frederick Forsythe and Robert Ludlum was of higher priority that perusing Modern Biology. There are addictions that can kill, this one sure killed my time in those days!
While more pressing responsibilities and the rigours of adulthood no longer permit verbose novel reading, the internet is still there – though dormant! This addict friend mentioned that there is a new thriller Author, in the mould of Sidney Sheldon. Alas, I could not remember the name he mentioned! Predictably, I fired up my laptop and googled “best thriller novelist”. Woa! I have a list of really thrilling novels to download.
It suddenly occured to me that majority of people would likely head over to a Glendora BookShop in search of novels or books of interest. A miser and geek like me would , of course, check if I could not get things free from the internet FIRST. Sure enough, there are enough thrilling (and boring!) novels, professional books, videos, audios and the likes to download free from the web. if you will just google, bing, or devilfind !
My favorite site for downloads is 4shared. There are of course numerous other sites where materials can be grabbed – gratis – from the internet. Another addiction I need a shrink for is mobile applications. I can spend a whole day analyzing (mobile) applications. Predictably, I use an app for grabbing stuff sharp-sharp from the net. This application is ‘4shared’. It is a faster alternative to grabbing stuff from www.4shared.com. If you own a Symbian phone, visit www.4shared.com and download this app. You will then be able to search, upload or download content-on-the-go, right from your mobile phone. Straight to the buuls-eye, no dithering!
Most of the materials from these free download sites are either in zipped, rar’ed or pdf format. So if you love to read content from your mobile, it would be wise to have a capable pdf application and an extractor program. I use Xplorer for Symbian and Pdf
And as to those novels, some of the ones I have downloaded (and have not had time to read) are titles from John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon, Alistair Maclean, Robert Ludlum. And in the ‘serious’ category, i have lots of Robert Kiyosaki titles.
I pray I have time to read most of these things!
So, before you shell out your money for ANY BOOK, video, WHATEVER, check out if you cannot get it for free (electronically) from the world wide web.
The free electronic format has the advantages of being FREE (surprise!), lasts forever (it IS in electronic formation – on your flash drive), can be easily duplicated (try that with ‘Winning” by Jach Welch), easily transmitted to friends and foes – , and so on, and so on. You get the point! So, which would you rather than have, a library in the palms of your hand, or an old-school-type library of books that a lorry will labour to transport? Now, that Obasanjo library – who needs that, huh? I got my library with me all the thyme!
9 comments
Akpokpokpo
Dude.
To use your Chrisokotieistic verbosity: Availability of abundant consumables without the need for purchase invariably leads to diarrhoeal bowel movement. Simply put Awoof dey run bele! when will you read all these free books. Unless your storage na server sha, you go soon run out of space!
I do remember that eni to ni blogi yi always had loads of novel. I read most of them and started a very unprofitable habit of using all available funds to buy novels. I was known in all the hotspots for the purchase of books: Ikeja, Ojuelegba, Yaba. I even became a connoisseur for hard-covers, I disdained the paperback. I would refuse to read the next book in a series if it wasn't available to me in hard-cover! Such was my predicament.
I have never reread a book. SO i invariably gave them away when decongesting my apartment or moving.
I have promptly joined a library and have my pick of the classics and fairly recent novels.
As for e-books, especially the freebies, if they aint academic articles i don't bother!
Wale Falade
I be dey wonder say who be this wey sabi me, Akpo na you? Nice of you to come around.
muyiscoi
I actually wanted to write something about the piracy angle. I have always wondered how you could get so much stuff for free on 4shared and other such sites on the internet. I know that p2p and torrent provides anonymity and the fact that it is not on a centralized server makes it difficult to stop. However, in the case of 4shared, i don't know how they do it. Maybe its the location of their servers, or the fact that all the content is uploaded by users, or some other reason i dont know about. I once did a google search on litigations against 4shared but couldnt find any. even sites like megaupload and other file hosting sites have often been told to screen illegal content from their sites however, i have not been able to find ant such story bout 4shared. i would love to know how they do it.
For us in this part of the world, it is only now becoming slightly easier to legally purchase stuff online. payment services like paypal still don't accept subscriptions from Nigeria and our debit cards don't work on foreign sites. The handfull of Nigerian online shops available have limited stock usually at exhorbitant prices so we are foreced to look to alternative souces for our books and other media; even d ones we would have otherwise bought.
trae_z
when it comes to books…novels to be precise, the greatest comfort is still having it in your hand as you read.
you just reminded me to register with 4shared, great site!
you missed out the piracy angle in this post. reminds me of an article i read online (CNET news.com i think) years ago where the writer was saying that in most cases people who run their mouth about free stuff and pro-piracy have never done any thing pro-intellectual property in their life. always taking no giving or creating. he then ended the article with a classic punch line: "if it makes you feel any better you can go ahead and print this page for FREE". i laughed my ass off. truest words!
Wale Falade
trae_z, i had a good laugh at your comments. Sadly, i guess you are right. But really, what is "piracy"? The definition seems to have blurred over the yes.
You will be surprised about the limited percentage of people that register on blogsites, even with the ease of doing it.
trae_z
additionally why i don't do disqus or facebook commenting etc is that i hate the idea that the comments on my site are tied to the functioning of another site. what happens if disqus goes down or there is a change in our equilibrium?
muyiscoi
hi. Yeah. its been a while. I for one like disqus and i use it on my blog. I like the fact that readers who already have a disqus account dont need to login to my blog to post a comment. I guess facebook also takes care of that too though.
Wale Falade
Hello Muyiscoi, long time.
I believe this would be your second time of registering, the earlier registration details were deleted. I tried disqus once, didnt like it. Not sure why. What i feel is the easiest to register with is with your facebook details, which i have retained on the site.
muyiscoi
I also read fiction alot. I am more inclined towards Fantasy than Thriller and Detective pieces though. Some of my favourites are Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan, The Circle Series by Ted dekker, Harry Potter Series by J.K Rowling, His Dark Material Series(or Golden compass series) by Phillip Pullman, Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer, Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S lewis, Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer, Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins e.t.c. Now that i look at it, it seems i prefer book series. Anyway, about 90% of all the books mentioned here and maybe about 70% of all the novels i have ever read have been in ebook format. The internet really is useful for us book geeks. However, i do feel that at some point, i will want to poses a hard copy of these books just to decorate my office… at some point.
Sidenote: I think i just registered on this site for the third time or so. The commenting system on wordpress is way better than that of blogger but i think the best i have seen is Disqus. It allows you to have one account and use that to comment on numerous blogs and it is widely used on blog sites. maybe you can look into implementing that on this blog. It is very easy to setup on wordpress. keepup d good work.