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I have read so many books this way! thank you piracy! Thank you authors! Thank you ibooks!
Currently rereading the Percy Jackson series.. im on book 5
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You donāt need to buy every book you read! Go to the library, download an ebook, find a PDF, create a personal JSTOR account. Youāll be surprised how much out there is free for the taking :)
Jan 20, 2024
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internet archive has a LOT of free ebooks/PDFs, especially public domain but also just lots of older things, even textbooks and picture books. amazing resource
i would go thru any libraries you can access first (for ethical/support yr library reasons) - most libraries have a form or you can go to the front desk to request a book be added to the collections. this works for ebooks too! itās not a guarantee, but sometimes they say yes
if all else fails, you can also just google ā[book name] PDFā and if itās an older or popular title it will probably be online lol. and if you have ibooks you can then export the pdf to ibooks
Aug 21, 2024
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Why pay money when libgen is free? The more questionable action I engage in is pirating regular books, I'm sure Nabokov won't mind if his publisher loses out on 20 bucks because I wanna read Pale Fire.
Dec 15, 2023
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I made a Goodreads account recently and it asked me to rate some popular books Iād read before. Little did I know, every time I ranked a book, it would give me 5 more similar to that one, and then 5 more from that, and on and on until a neverending phylogenetic tree of books emerged on my screen.
I was on FaceTime with my friend as I did this, and we compared which books weād both read, ones we loved, ones we got forced to read in school, ones we read as preteens, etc. But half an hour in and no end to the Goodreads algorithm, but stuck in The Very Hungry Caterpillar-y childrenās book branch of the algorithm tree that I couldnāt escape, I started to get mad. So I command-Qād chrome and called it a day.
This week I went back to organise my To Read list and to purge all the loose one-book memos on my notes app. My professor recently gave me her recommendations on queer literature and I wanted to properly organise them. On my profile it said Iād already read some 100+ books and Iād given them all 5 star ratings. Ok well now thatās pissing me off. Why is there digital clutter on my brand new account, and why did I give all that information to them anyways.? I love to categorise, but did I really need to log my readership of the individual 39 Clues books?
I feel similarly about when I first downloaded letterboxd and it made me go down a similar never ending algorithm of potential movies Iād watched before. I did spend an unreasonable amount of time swiping through those movies trying to remember if I really did watch Horton Hears a Who in 2008(?) or not.
Why do I feel the need to share this with the algorithm? genuinely what purpose does this serve me? Why am I volunteering memories from my 7 year old self when I learnt English by reading Geronimo Stilton books for the first time?
Anyways, I deleted all the past data from my Goodreads account. Thereās only logs from my current reads, and the list of books I want to read next. Thereās comfort in organising and seeing your life laid out in list/grid categories, like unlocking achievements on video games - oh did you know I read so and so and yeah I was a pretentious little bitch in high school and every YA book I read in 2013 has gotta be logged and
But thereās another type of comfort in keeping that information away from the internet where theyāll find a way to use that data against you. I canāt think of a single occasion Iād need personalised ads for the chick-lit books I read in primary school but I know the algorithm is going to eventually find a way to sell my nostalgia back to me somehowā¦ Iām going to open any of my little apps and see hyper specific #ad on my screen.
I know Iāve given so much of me away online already - and look what Iām doing right now(!) , sharing my interests and recommendations to strangers online hah .. I wonāt lie about the fact that it brings me joy to live online - itās been my playground for so much of my life - Like sorry I am literally the internet explorer -But there was a time before I lived on the internet. I donāt think they need to know everything about Then.
I recommend not giving up everything about yourself to the machine
Mar 8, 2024
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Rawdog the sound of society while you walkā¦ the tea is crazy
May 17, 2024