***LINKS LIST*** For Readers

I did a links list on Thursday for writers, and every writer should be,always, a reader. Here are **links for getting your read on :

• LibriVox.... has a good selection of books that can be downloaded for your listening. If you write romances of any kind, you must read "Fanny Hill" (while hearing it might help you and your plot some heat of your own). Aesop's works (for children and otherwise) could replace whatever you listen to on those family drives or during carpooling duties. If you want, you can volunteer to be a recorded reader. Use the simple or advanced Search system to explore the library of works. Lots of stuff there.
• Project Gutenberg ....not only offers free ebooks, but I noticed that they have a self-publishing opportunity for "contemporary writers". Huh. Interesting. I can't tell you more because, when I looked, the site was undergoing temporary maintenance. Best way to check this site is by going here and then finding the Site Map near the bottom of the page. Note that you can make donations. Think of it as supporting literacy and value in the age of the Kardashians.
• Cliff's Notes.... (and, I learned that I have been spelling that right, until everyone did it wrong so long that wrong has become right, like, yep, the Kardashians did with pop culture's idea of what's "trashy" and "classy".) ~deep breaths, Trudy, take deep breaths~  Think Cliff's Notes and "cheating" comes to mind. I like to think that the Notes can help you pick and choose which works of literature you want to start with when you decide to expand your reading. Stephen King is my hero, but I know that's only because he fed his writing diet with a knowledge of the writers I spent most of high school avoiding by using Cliff's Notes. Here's how I use the Notes to feed myself: I make a list of books that I've been told any serious writer should read, then I read a C.N. summary to decide which one I feel like starting with at the moment. In the meantime, I can hold pretty my own in conversations with well-read people. You can find anything in the C.N. from autobiographies (Ben Franklin and Malcolm X, for instance) to that delicately bawdy "Fanny Hill" I spoke of before. By the way, Cliff's Notes are just the better known notes, but there are others that I found via Wikipedia: 60-Second Recap seems more suited to Cracked Readers (me!), Book Rags and, Spark Notes (which had full text of a title I checked). 

In my post of links for writers, I neglected to add a list of the free Kindle books Amazon has available. I will try to provide links in this following list, but things sometimes go crossways when I do this with my Amazon account. If the links don't work for you, simply do your own Amazon search in "books" on "grammar".

• The Elements of Style (yep, that one)
• Word Study and English Grammar
• The Grammar of English Grammars (cute title)

You get the idea. Amazon's notes indicate that these books are also available free elsewhere on the web. I included them because I know lots of folks use Kindle readers.

I am sure that there are many, many more sites out there that have useful reading for writers. Just go and explore. Start somewhere.

Good reading and writing.

Peace

--Free

** Make sure to read each site's notes about copyright. Books are made public domain by expired copyright; this varies by country.

Hi. How Are You? Who Are You?

The other day, when I was looking at stats to identify the blog's most popular posts, I also glanced at where returning visitors come from. Actually, over the past several months, I have used Feedjit off and on to see where my visitors hail from. (By the way, I myself don't like the idea of being watched, so I don't like to look too closely at my readers without their knowing. That's kind of creepy, don't you think?) Anyway, Feedjit just gives me a look at locations of readers. If it does give me any more info than that, I don't really know or care.

The only reason I even like knowing where readers come in from is that I'd like to sometimes post about things that might interest them instead of talking about myself all the time. Because I have the attention span of a toddler, even though I glance at my reader stats all the time, I remember those stats for about half a second. The good thing about that is, repeat visitors kind of stand out even in my memory.

It looks like I have some faithful readers out there from outside Paris, France, in Washington state and California and New York and down in Brisbane and Sydney. I get a lot of visitors from the UK. If I look closer at stats, I seem to attract the attention of more folks outside the US - at least enough for them to come back. Wonder what that means?

~shrug~

Blogger, Technorati, Feedjit... numbers, graphs and charts. I can give myself a major headache if i look too long at any of this stuff. What am I supposed to do with this information? No clue. I just found it interesting for about five minutes. And it made me want to know about the folks who come over and take a look at the blog. I'm so self-focused when write my posts, but, if I could talk to you guys, I'd want to know more about you.

So, all right then, I am talking to you, and I am very nosy:

• Where are you from & do you like it there or not? Why?
• Are you Android or Apple?
• What would you do if you could do anything and get paid for it?
• What's your favorite social network, if you have one? (G+, Facebook, Twitter....)
• Are you creative & how?
• Do you have a theme song? What is it?
• What's your zodiac sign?
• Are you part of a big family? Do you like that?
• What's your favorite song, book, quote...?
• What cycle of your life are you in right now? (Happy, sad, changing, learning...)

Of course, I have learned from experience that my readers tend to be shy. I get more direct emails than I do comments here and on G+. That's okay. If you do email, please remember to put the post title in the Subject line. Sometimes things go straight to my junk folder and I can't tell what's what.

Peace
--Free