Free And Nearly Free Literature

The best literature ever written is often available almost free. All those books that HighSchool and college students are supposed to read are available at your nearest used bookstore or garage sale in paperback (often unread) for pennies. There is a reason why students are assigned these books to read: The writing is of the highest quality, and the subject matter stands the test of time. Go stock up.

Or on the Internet:

and your local library.

Here are just a few of the books (in no particular order) which I have picked up for stray pocket change:

A Tale of Two Cities, CharlesDickens
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo
BraveNewWorld, AldousHuxley
SlaughterhouseFive, KurtVonnegut Jr.
All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
NineteenEightyFour, GeorgeOrwell
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Being There, Jerzy Kosinski
One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest, KenKesey
FahrenheitFourFiveOne, RayBradbury
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

Of course, cheesy romance novels and book club 'selections of the month' are even cheaper in the used market... -- TimVoght

In the U.S., at least, the best place to find paperbacks really cheap are at resale shops run - Goodwill, Salvation Army, local religious organizations, where often everything in soft cover is $0.25. Of course, the cheese mentioned above predominates, but you can find amazing bargains.

Many libraries (at least in the U.S.) have book sales to earn money. Some of the books are retired library books, but most are donated by the local citizenry. There's an excellent web page with schedules for such book sales across the country: http://www.book-sales-in-america.com -- TimVoght

Often, people will donate books to libraries that are worthwhile, but slightly worn (especially paperbacks), and not added to the collection. They tend to go directly to book sales, generally for mere pocket change. -- SckotVokes

BookCrossing is a program that leaves books in public places for anyone to find, read, and pass on. Anyone can join.

You know, this assumes that the "best" literature was that written a hundred years ago, an assumption that's quite risible on its face.

I think you're the one who's introducing that assumption. Look at the list of books given by TimVoght above. Out of 11 books, two were written in the 19th century; the rest were written in the 20th century. including five that were written in the last 50 years.

The question is why people think that the best literature is old literature. To that question there is a simple answer: there are too many authors nowadays for any one of them to capture the imagination of the entire world. This doesn't mean that literature in the past was any better either on average or at its peak, it means in fact that literature in the past was extremely sparse.

No; it means that we've had time to forget about all the crap that was written in the past, while the crap that's being written today is still fresh in our (collective) memory. Ever wonder why a much greater proportion of old architecture than new architecture looks good? It's because the old buildings that looked good were kept, and the ones that didn't weren't.

StewartBrand voices a different theory on that in HowBuildingsLearn. He says all fashions go through a phase of looking "out of style" before reaching "classic" status. Buildings that aren't torn down or remodeled during the "out of style" phase have a chance of becoming classics. Alas, many of my favorite local buildings designed during the 1950s-1970s have already been destroyed and will never be appreciated by future generations. My city has a hard time preserving its kitsch.