Every Friday, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle. Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog, ClassicKindle.com, a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

I have spent well over a thousand afternoons in Chicago, many at Wrigley Field and many viewing the impressionist art at the Art Institute.  And I spent a few afternoons at the Billy Goat Pub.  Had Ben Hecht been of a different era, I am sure I would have run into him.

As it was, he toiled as newspaper writer in Chicago until the movies began to speak and he headed for Hollywood.  There he became one of the most successful writers and those who remember him, know him as one of the wittiest, whose humor still appeals to us.  (He co-wrote the play and movie script, “The Front Page”  and then switched the sexes and rewrote it at “His Girl Friday,”  one of the best of the screwball comedies.)

This is a collection of short pieces that were a column he did for the newspaper.  From the preface, “”One Thousand and One Afternoons” were launched in June, 1921. They were presented to the public as journalism extraordinary; journalism that invaded the realm of literature, where in large part, journalism really dwells.”Hecht wrote of a time and place that is not really gone, because the daily life of a great city tends to be the same, even over time. 

NOTES FOR A TRAGEDY Jan Pedlowski came home yesterday and found that his wife had run away. There was supper on the table. And under the soup plate was a letter addressed to Jan. It read, in Polish: “I am sick and tired. You keep on nagging me all the time and I can’t stand it any more. You will be better off without me.”Paula.”Jan ate his supper and then put his hat and coat on and went over to see the sergeant at the West Chicago Avenue police station. The sergeant appeared to be busy, so Jan waited. Then he stepped forward and said:”My wife has run away. I want to catch her.”The sergeant was lacking in sympathy. He told Jan to go home and wait and that the missus would probably come back. And that if she didn’t he could get a divorce. “I don’t want a divorce,” said Jan. “I want to catch her.”

Or,

Most of the things we have to deal with is chiefly murders and suicides and highway robberies, like the time old Alderman McGuire, who is dead now, was held up by two bandits while going home from a night session of the council, and he hypnotized one bandit. Yes, sir, you may wonder at that, but you didn’t know McGuire. He was a wonderful hypnotist, and he hypnotized the bandit, and just as the other one, who wasn’t hypnotized, was searching his pockets McGuire said to the hypnotized bandit, ‘You’re a policeman, shoot this highwayman.’ And the hypnotized one was the bandit who had the gun, and he turned around, as Alderman McGuire said, and shot the other, unhypnotized bandit and killed him. But when he reported the entire incident to the station–I was on duty that night–the captain wouldn’t believe it, and tried to argue McGuire into saying it was a accident, and that the gun had gone off accidentally and killed the unhypnotized bandit. But the alderman stuck to his story, and it was true, because the hypnotized bandit told me privately all about it when I took him down to Joliet.

Maybe you have to have lived in Chicago, where an Alderman is more important than a Congressman, but I believe this is one of the true stories!

Download your free copy of “A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago” by Ben Hecht here >>>

Every Friday, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle. Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog, ClassicKindle.com, a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

Theodore Dreiser’s acclaimed first novel, Sister Carrie is free on Kindle, but beware!

One of the free versions is corrupt, with wrong words and missing text. This is from the first paragraph. The emphasis is mine.

She was eighteen years or age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterized her given up.

Huh?

Between the words, “her” and “given up” should be the phrase: “thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being”

Here it is the entire first paragraph should read :

When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister’s address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up.

This is not due to a difference between edited editions. It is a careless conversion to the Kindle format. The first free version offered on Amazon is the bad one and I do not link to it here. There is another free version, which appears to be fine and that is the link in this blog.

Here is a tip. When you are looking at a free classic book that has been on Amazon for over a decade, there may be a hundred reviews and most will not be for the Kindle edition. Look for a rating of one star. Sometimes when there is a bad Kindle version, you will find a kindly Amazon reviewer has alerted people with a one star review. That was the case here.

While I am handing out tips, there is no guarantee than an inexpensive version of a classic is also not corrupt. Sometimes these versions are identical to the free version, except for price. Before you pay for a classic, download the free chapter to check it out.

Here is some more of Sister Carrie – with no missing words:

“Carrie Meeber,” she said slowly. “Three hundred and fifty-four West Van Buren Street, care S. C. Hanson.”
He wrote it carefully down and got out the purse again. “You’ll be at home if I come around Monday night?” he said. ”
I think so,” she answered.
How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes. Here were these two, bandying little phrases, drawing purses, looking at cards, and both unconscious of how inarticulate all their real feelings were. Neither was wise enough to be sure of the working of the mind of the other. He could not tell how his luring succeeded. She could not realise that she was drifting, until he secured her address. Now she felt that she had yielded something—he, that he had gained a victory. Already they felt that they were somehow associated. Already he took control in directing the conversation. His words were easy. Her manner was relaxed.

So why am I, the reader, not feeling relaxed?

Download your free copy of “Sister Carrie” by Theodore Dreiser here >>>

Every Friday, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle. Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog, ClassicKindle.com, a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I think I have read this three times, but only once as an adult. Jane Eyre has a reputation as a woman’s book, possibly because so many adolescent girls read and love this classic.

Those men who do read the book are probably dutifully reading their way through the Brontë sisters. I hope not, but suspect it is the case!

This is a strange, dark, romantic book with a strange, dark romantic hero. (A familiar Brontë theme.) The book has some interesting plot twists and is not slow moving in that sense. But time moves very slowly for Jane and Rochester. I don’t know if this is a book for everyone, but I think you will know from the first chapter if you are going to like it or not. The beginning about Jane’s childhood has always reminded me of Dicken’s darker descriptions of childhood and is very affecting.

‘You ought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Reed: she keeps you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poorhouse.”
I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. Miss Abbot joined in –

“And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none: it is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to them.”‘

It is a good book, give it a chance fellas! And women, enjoy it again!

Download your free copy of “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë here >>>