With the summer months fast approaching and spare time (ideally) in your future, you'll likely need something to read.
How about something classic? Intellectually stimulating?
How about something for free?
Amazon is overloaded with with books for the low price of: $owning.a.phone.
Follow the links below for some essential reading available for free on the Amazon Kindle Marketplace, just in time for beach season...
Moby-Dick
It's summer. That means the fourteen-pound copies of Moby-Dick emerge from hibernation to feed on the reduced attention spans of college sophomores everywhere. Look, cool your heels and just read the freaking thing, alright? Moby-Dick is fine dining experience. It swings between writing styles time and again. It's about nothing but whaling, until it's about man trying to kill God, until it goes back to whaling, until it's about man trying to kill himself.
Like so many free books on this list, every soul ought to read, study, and develop an opinion on Moby-Dick. Hit the link and get reading.
Othello
Classic revenge at the theater. Othello is a wonderful play. It's about a good soldier's tragic reduction as a jealous psycho ruins his life. I adore Othello's interplay with Iago. There aren't many Shakespeare plays with such brutally PRESENT lead villains, and it's not a bold statement to call Iago, the villain (with the most lines in the play), the co-lead. He's just constantly there, fucking Othello over, again and again.
I'd go so far as to call Othello the best Shakespeare play. While I'd entertain discussions for Macbeth, As You Like It, and Hamlet, Othello is the one for me. Few free books can light a debate like Othello, so get it and upset some English literature undergrads.
Jane Eyre
I wrote a review of the 2011 Jane Eyre movie, directed by the True Detective season 1 maestro, Cary Fukunaga. The movie glides along wonderfully, but you can hit that link for more details on what the story is about.
(Artwork inspired by Jane Eyre. Seriously.)
As for the book, I vastly prefer the Brontës to Jane Austen. They're harder and meaner.
Don't dismiss Jane Eyre, or any of the other free books, on this list as chick-lit romance. Jane Eyre is a depressing-AF ghost story, as relevant today as it was then.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Last one? Saving the 10-ton gorilla, per usual. Portrait of the Artist is a brick of ash. Like Moby-Dick, it swaps between styles throughout the story.
But, aha, there's genius in those changes. Notice the details that appear, disappear, and reappear as the style changes, the character grows, and the story advances. A million morons have mimicked, praised, and misunderstood James Joyce, myself included, depending on the day and how much caffeine I have in my system. But you've gotta bang your head against Irish literature at some point to know what it means to be alone, artistic, and Catholic.
Just like in the earlier list, don't wade into the deep end until you're ready. Free books are normally about dabbling, but this one takes some commitment.
What else?
The Amazon Kindle Marketplace is packed with free entertainment. If you want to fork over the mighty sum of $1, the library expands even further. If you dare pay $5—hardly more than a cup of coffee with too much artificial sweetener—you're venturing into an exciting territory.
If you want to read more about Ghost Little's own growing library of free books and original fiction, mash the link and get yourself a taste of indie creative culture.
