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:

E.M. Forster is a great writer and his first novel from 1905, “Where Angels Fear to Tread,” is not the usual first novel. It is a completely developed work. Consider this Amazon Reader Review:

” This is by far my favorite novel by Forster, and many rereadings have made it one of my favorite novels, period. In his first book, Forster shows a subtlety and lightness of touch . . . He makes wonderful use of the Italian settings and of Italian art, bringing them to vivid life, undermining tourist clichés, and weaving them gracefully into his main themes. No other book I know balances romanticism and irony so perfectly.”

So let’s take a look.

All her life had been spent at Sawston with a dull and amiable father, and her pleasant, pallid face, bent on some respectable charity, was a familiar object of the Sawston streets. Why she had ever wished to leave them was surprising; but as she truly said, “I am John Bull to the backbone, yet I do want to see Italy, just once. Everybody says it is marvellous, and that one gets no idea of it from books at all.” The curate suggested that a year was a long time; and Miss Abbott, with decorous playfulness, answered him, “Oh, but you must let me have my fling! I promise to have it once, and once only. It will give me things to think about and talk about for the rest of my life.” The curate had consented; so had Mr. Abbott. And here she was in a legno, solitary, dusty, frightened, with as much to answer and to answer for as the most dashing adventuress could desire.

It seems an adventure will be at hand for the reader. All of Forster’s books are engaging on a very thoughtful. This is one of the better free classics.

Click here to get your free copy of Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster >>>

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 was trying to think of a book to get lost in and Dickens always comes to mind. The colorful characters, descriptions and locale can be nowhere but Victorian London, unless you are reading A Tale of Two Cities.

It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Dickens wrote many great novels. Some of them are rather long, but not this story of “The Terror” -when being outed as an aristocrat was a death sentence. I also find it reads very fast, starting from the famous first paragraph.

The book goes on to top the beginning, so enjoy!

Click here to get your free copy of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens >>>

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:

Here is a selection from travel memoirs with the unwieldy title of The World’s Greatest Books – Volume 19 – Travel and Adventure

Here is a selection from travel memoirs with the unwieldy title of World’s Greatest Books — Volume 19 — Travel and Adventure. It was edited in MCMX! I find a book of excerpts is a handy thing to have on your Kindle. It is a change of pace and you may want a shorter piece to read than a book.

The chapters, each from a different memoir, are hyperlinked. I know some people do not want a book without hyperlinks- but I do not use the hyperlinks. I let Kindle bookmark my place and I forward through if I don’t like a writer.

Some names are familiar, Dickens, Darwin and Cook. Kinglake is included. There is an excerpt from Eothen, arguably the best travel book ever written, ” distinguished for its refined style and delightful humour.”

“At Semlin I was still encompassed by the scenes and sounds of familiar life, yet whenever I chose to look southward I saw the Ottoman fortress—austere, and darkly impending high over the vale of the Danube—historic Belgrade. I had come to the end of wheel-going Europe, and now my eyes would see the splendour and havoc of the East. We managed the work of departure from Semlin with nearly as much solemnity as if we had been departing this life. The plague was supposed to be raging in the Ottoman Empire, and we were asked by our Semlin friends if we were perfectly certain that we had wound up all our affairs in Christendom.”

Not what you read in a travel memoir today!

Here is an account of traveling light, circa 1813:

“I carried with me nothing but my gun, sabre, and pistol, a provision bag, and a woollen mantle, which served either for a carpet or a covering during the night. I was dressed in the blue gown of the merchants of Upper Egypt. After estimating the expense I was likely to incur in Nubia, I put eight Spanish dollars into my purse in conformity with the principle I have consistently acted upon during my travels—viz., that the less the traveller spends while on the march, and the less money he carries with him, the less likely are his travelling projects to miscarry.”

Happy Trails!

It was edited in MCMX!

Click here to get your free copy of The World’s Greatest Books – Volume 19 – Travel and Adventure >>>