My favourite ebook sites

I do not endorse ebook piracy. But all said and done, there are several sites where you could obtain free ebooks, sometimes even of recent releases. It did not surprise me to find an e-copy of Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” on the net, the day it was published.

Listed below are my favourite ebook sites:

 www.scribd.com
The ultimate free ebook website. All you need is to search for the author/ title and presto… you have it. Well, not  that easily.  But it is definitely a treasure house for ebooks.

www.4shared.com
Similar to scribd. Here is your chance to exercise your search skills. The results could surprise you.

www.truly-free.org
My personal favourite. A literature buff’s closely guarded site. I do not reveal it to many.  Here you would find literary gems that are not available anywhere else on the net. A jewel in the crown.

 The best ebook search engine I have come across: www.justfreebooks.info/

I also search www.esnips.com and www.ebookee.com for ebooks. These offer links to rapidlibrary or megaupload from where you can download the ebooks.

Insatiable bibliomaniacs, please check this link for an excellent listing of 20 best free ebook web sites.

The Double – José Saramago

Just finished reading The Double by José Saramago. It was my introduction to this Nobel Prize winning author.

The story revolves around Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, a reclusive history teacher suddenly confronted by his double. Afonso encounters his duplicate in a video recommended by his colleague. He chases him down despite a sinister foreboding about the consequences. Tragic events unfold, impelled by fate, once they meet.

It is said that every person has a double somewhere in the world. But we rarely ever come face to face with them in real life. In the story, destiny has located Afonso’s doppelgänger in the very same city. Saramago asserts the we can never tolerate the existence of a double once we realize their existence.

The narrative style is smooth although a single line can run into a whole paragraph punctuated by commas. Conversations frequently go back and forth spanning pages, the characters and speech discernible only by the uppercase and context. Occasionally the author appears in the guise of a narrator and inserts curious expositive passages bordering on the frivolous.

Saramago managed to capture my imagination. His facility for storytelling is remarkable. To me the plot is only marginally interesting. The anecdotes, the perspicacious insights, the style of narrative, the subtle humour and the almost poetic usage of words are what really endeared me to José Saramago. I do not have most of his works. I’m itching to lay my hands on “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” next.

Click here for an interesting review of the book.