What are the best public domain books that you’ve read? My currently downloaded books include “The Time Machine”, “Pride and Prejudice”, “Frankenstein”, “War and Peace”, “On Liberty”, “Metamorphosis” (all from Librivox), etc. I especially like “Crime and Punishment” and “Brothers Karamazov” and others by Dostoevsky since they delve deeper into human psychology, values, and morality. Also to add, Librivox is so fucking cool and now I have something to listen to on my daily bus/car rides.

  • Don Antonio Magino@feddit.nl
    2·
    12 hours ago

    For Dutch an important source of public domain literature is the Database voor de Nederlandse letteren (dbnl), in cooperation of the Nederlandse taalunie (Dutch Language Union) with several heritage libraries and the Dutch Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library).

    My favourite book you can find on there is probably De stille kracht (The silent force) by Louis Couperus. It’s about a high ranking Dutch colonial family living in a town in East Java, and also the people around them, trying to get the Indies to follow their rules, to be what they want it to be, but in the end failing miserably.

    There’s always a lingering feeling of impending doom which, though it goes more to the background at times, never fully goes away. I love it.

    De stille kracht is well-known as far as Dutch novels go, there are translations in major European languages (even one in Finnish!).

  • Drasglaf@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    13 hours ago

    I’d like to add Dracula by Bram Stoker and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol to the books already mentioned.

  • Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    8·
    19 hours ago

    I’d recommend reading Orwell’s earlier works (which might or might not be public domain in the US, but is in Canada, Australia and parts of the EU). Like “Down and Out in Paris and London”. Nothing at all like 1984 or Animal Farm, but still really good.

  • garden@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    25·
    1 day ago

    Not a book suggestion, but I cannot recommend Standard Ebooks highly enough as a source of public domain ebooks. Professionally typeset, with consistent standards, all while being free and volunteer-driven!

    • Microw@lemm.ee
      2·
      19 hours ago

      Do you happen to know if they have any in other languages than English?

    • Brian@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      Thank you for the link. I didn’t know about Standard Ebooks: looks like a very broad range of material!

    • Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      7·
      19 hours ago

      It’s great, but the translation in public domain is not as good as the one by Robin Buss in recent years. I think some translations even ignore large parts of the book, e.g. the opium-smoking harem part. That’s the general issue with translated foreign language books from the 1800s/early 1900s.

  • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
    8·
    1 day ago

    Dostoevsky is amazing. I’m not sure I could have followed his writing over audiobook, though. Tolstoy is an obvious add if you like Russian lit.

    I haven’t read any of it in a while, but I loved anything by Jules Verne when I was a kid. Frankenstein is arguably one of the first science fiction books, but Verne really made it a genre.

    Not to be too much of a “the book is better than the movie”-person, but Les Miserables is really good and has a lot deeper meaning than the play or movie based on the play. The Count of Monte Cristo is also worth a read.

  • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    6·
    1 day ago

    Frankenstein really is a fantastic read. Anything by Ray Bradbury, I read the short story “The Pedestrian” in school and it had a strong impression on me.

  • whoareu@lemmy.ca
    5·
    1 day ago

    “Starting forth” the best book to learn about forth or programming in general

  • KanadrAllegria@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    I absolutely adore Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

    As an aside, I tried so hard to read Crime and Punishment(twice), but I don’t think I ever finished it. Or if I did I can’t remember the ending. Maybe I had a bad translation, or maybe I have a short attention span, I don’t know…

    (Sorry for the edit, I hit send before I was done typing)

    • Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      19 hours ago

      As I mentioned in another comment, the translations in public domain are often not as good as modern ones. They might shy away from certain things/censor stuff (or in the case of The Count of Monte Cristo, just completely ignore large parts of the book), and either way they use more archaic language that usually doesn’t flow as smoothly. Of course there are exceptions to this, but this is my general impression. Though, to be honest, I didn’t like Crime and Punishment that much either haha. I didn’t understand why people saw it as one of the greatest books ever written.

  • banazir@lemmy.ml
    2·
    1 day ago

    I’m throwing in The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, which I really enjoyed, and The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin, which is a really interesting travel journal. Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne is also great. And since you like Dostoevsky, maybe try Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev?

    People always praise Frankenstein, but I thought it was poorly written and frankly nonsensical. Shelley’s The Last Man is better, but a bit dull.