Read a book on a computer? Never, I said. Never. Give me even a tattered paperback, but online? No. But that was the whole book, downloaded in a lump.
Now there is DailyLit, an internet site for the installment readers. At http://www.dailylit.com/, you can sign up for e-mailed installments of several hundred out-of-copyright books. Or just like the readers of Dickens who waited at the docks in New York for the last chapter of a Dickens novel, you get your book serialized and sent to your computer. The creators point out that you can choose your time interval (each weekday at midnight, for example), and DailyLit will feed your in-box with the next five-minute dose of Dostoyevsky or Dickens for free. The Library’s copy of Cousin Bette(Betty) by Honore de Balzac is checked out and I was dying to read the first chapter today as I had just viewed the brilliant BBC adaptation of Cousin Bette with Helen Mirren on DVD. DailyLit had it on line—I signed up and received the first installment within three minutes—not willing to wait until my next installment tomorrow for my break, I ordered the next one which also appeared in about one minute. Maybe just one more before my break is over…
You can read The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde in 28 well-timed installments, for instance, or The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin in 205 easy pieces. The press blurb states that the site has attracted about 100,000 subscribers since it started in May—now make that 100,001.
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