Read the Classics On Your 4G Phone
If you love to read, then you might have noticed that a significant portion of your monthly budget goes to procuring all of the best texts. A hardcover book can cost upwards of $30 these days when it first debuts on the market. And even if you are a savvy consumer and use your local library like it is going out of style, wait times can feel like they are taking forever when that brand new Nora Ephron tome has just been released and all of your friends are reading it.
That is why it makes sense to cut back the budget of a different part of your literary life: the classics. That's right, unless you are a huge snob or aspiring scholar, there is no reason to pay for a fancy, annotated, hardcover version of King Lear or Gulliver's Travels or Wuthering Heights when you can get the vast majority of these older novels for free.
How can you do this? All you need is a 4G phone, or even a simple wireless Internet connection. A well-kept secret of the publishing world is that most laws dictate that an author's estate's claim to his or her copyright is rendered void 100 after the author's death. This means that the great works by Mary Shelley, Cervantes, Miguel de Cervantes, Ovid, and Samuel Johnson are all available for free. While books will never be published for free, because the people who create the new addition want to turn a profit, many of these titles can be found online for no money at all!
If you have a 4G phone, you can download a free app like Kindle and then check out the various titles that are available to you. Some people feel like reading a novel on a phone is not the same as curling up with a book before you fall asleep at night. And to an extent this is true - nothing will ever replace the feeling of a novel between your fingers as you become totally engaged in a riveting plot. But save that experience for the new books that you cannot get online for free or the older ones that are readily available at the library, and save your money on the classics.
Getting your books with wireless Internet also makes it much easier to transport them when you are traveling or commuting. Instead of having to lug around a 5-pound, 600-page book in your carry-on or your briefcase, you can simply transport your phone, which you clearly would have brought along anyways!
If you do not have the greatest eyesight and you are worried that you might not be able to see the words on your 4G phone, fear not. All you have to do is double-click the screen and you will be able to zoom in so that the words on the screen are quite large indeed. Some versions of books sold with wireless Internet even come in larger fonts to aid aging readers so that you have nothing to worry about.
That is why it makes sense to cut back the budget of a different part of your literary life: the classics. That's right, unless you are a huge snob or aspiring scholar, there is no reason to pay for a fancy, annotated, hardcover version of King Lear or Gulliver's Travels or Wuthering Heights when you can get the vast majority of these older novels for free.
How can you do this? All you need is a 4G phone, or even a simple wireless Internet connection. A well-kept secret of the publishing world is that most laws dictate that an author's estate's claim to his or her copyright is rendered void 100 after the author's death. This means that the great works by Mary Shelley, Cervantes, Miguel de Cervantes, Ovid, and Samuel Johnson are all available for free. While books will never be published for free, because the people who create the new addition want to turn a profit, many of these titles can be found online for no money at all!
If you have a 4G phone, you can download a free app like Kindle and then check out the various titles that are available to you. Some people feel like reading a novel on a phone is not the same as curling up with a book before you fall asleep at night. And to an extent this is true - nothing will ever replace the feeling of a novel between your fingers as you become totally engaged in a riveting plot. But save that experience for the new books that you cannot get online for free or the older ones that are readily available at the library, and save your money on the classics.
Getting your books with wireless Internet also makes it much easier to transport them when you are traveling or commuting. Instead of having to lug around a 5-pound, 600-page book in your carry-on or your briefcase, you can simply transport your phone, which you clearly would have brought along anyways!
If you do not have the greatest eyesight and you are worried that you might not be able to see the words on your 4G phone, fear not. All you have to do is double-click the screen and you will be able to zoom in so that the words on the screen are quite large indeed. Some versions of books sold with wireless Internet even come in larger fonts to aid aging readers so that you have nothing to worry about.
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