The Grand Library of Kiwi Farms - Farms based Archive of great Public Domain works

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mindlessobserver

True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Jul 18, 2017
Please follow the thread's rules. All commentary or discussion should be made in this accompanying thread.



THIS MONTHS BOOK FEATURE
TREASURE ISLAND
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by Robert Louis Stevenson

archived by @Sexy Senior Citizen
Jim Hawkins, the son of an innkeeper, is drawn into an adventure when aged pirate Billy Bones dies. Escaping with his mother after a failed attack on the inn by Bones' shipmates, Jim discovers Billy was in possession of a map leading to the legendary treasure of pirate Captain Flint. Showing the map to Dr. Livesey and Squire Trelawney, the three decide to follow it and retrieve the treasure, chartering a ship and crew under Captain Smollett. But the crew have their own designs against Jim and his friends, and they are led by the former shipmate of Billy Bones and Captain Flint- the sinister Long John Silver.​

INTRODUCTION

There is a rule around here. "Archive Everything". This rule exists for a reason. Because the digital space is an ever shifting sea of sand where things can exist one day, and be gone the next. Solely on the whims of the people in control of the data. As more and more things become consumed by the digital space, there is a very real danger of the great works of history also being only easily accessible digitally. And digital copies are by their nature dependent on the people who control them. Which means they could at any moment either be edited or outright deleted. To that end I propose this thread serve as an Archive for the great works. There is no set criteria save only your own belief that a particular digital copy of a book is worth archiving. This incidentally has been the stated mission of other major non profit projects such as "Project Gutenberg". Since this idea jives so well with the ethos of the website, I'm surprised a similar effort has not been proposed here. So here it is now.


RULES
1. The work archived must be in the public domain. No copyrighted books. This is not a piracy thread. Examples of a public domain book is "Around the World in 80's Days" which was published more then a century ago. Nobody owns the rights too it anymore. The latest crap being shat onto Kindle Unlimited every day on the other hand is an example of stuff not to archive. If you are uncertain if a work is Public Domain or not, here is a simple guide on the subject.

2. Each post must be made in the following format, in order to make the book searchable within the thread.
a. Title
b. Author
c. Year of original publication
d. Location the file was obtained at
e. Date YOU downloaded the file
f. Brief explanation of the book and its contents. Write the description with search optimization in mind. If it's a science fiction book, say so.

3. It follows that each archived book post must be unique. No massive dumps of multiple books in one post. If a book is worthy of an archive it must stand alone, not just for its worth, but also so anyone searching the thread can find the specific title. A Library must be searchable.

4. There is now a meta thread for talking about the Library and its contents. Keep this thread for just the books. In short, silence in the Library!

5. Make sure the work you are posting has not already been posted. An exception to this is works included in an omnibus of an authors work, i.e, the complete works of "Jules Verne". Individual copies of the one story out of the Omnibus may still be added. If you think you have a superior copy of a given work to what has been posted, bring it up in the Meta Thread.

HOW TO SEARCH THE LIBRARY

The Formatting of each archive post is intended to make searching for the works possible using the forums in built search function. Simply look at the top of your browser window and "Left Click" on the Search button. After that, make sure the box marked "This Thread" is selected. After that it is simply a matter of typing in the title of the book you are looking for, or the author. As more stuff gets added, searching for more general terms will be possible due to the format's inclusion of book description.

In conclusion, I shall now quote the great bard, Brandon Sanderson.

I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted

 
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AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS

Jules Verne

1920 Digitized Copy by Scribner
Obtained from Internet Archive
4/21/2024

An adventure novel written a few years after the completion of the Trans Continental Railroad in North America and the apex of the power of the British Empire. It tells the story of a wealthy Londoner who bets his entire fortune that he can travel the entire circumference of the planet in 80 days.
 

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THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA

Friedrich Nietzsche

Digitized version of "The Modern Library Edition". Date of Publication unknown.
Downloaded from the Internet Archive
4/21/2024

In this book, Nietzsche outlines his philosophy of the Super Man, who has achieved morality absent any god or societal constraints. However upon returning to society he struggles to explain his position. Zarathustra is a thinly veiled metaphor for Nietzsche himself.
 

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ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Eric Maria Remarque

Digitized version of the 1984 7th printing from Ballantine Books
Downloaded from Internet Archive
4/21/2024

In this book, Remarque tells the story of World War 1 from the perspective of a lowly German infantryman. It is considered one of the most uncompromising depictions of war, and the First World War in particular ever put to print.
 

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THE BOY ALLIES WITH MARSHALL FOCH

Claire W. Hayes

PDF Copy of the 1919 version of the book.
Project Gutenberg
4/21/2024

In this book you follow the exciting adventures of two American lads as they fight as foreign volunteers in the French Army during World War 1. Unlike books depicting the horrors of war, this book (which is part of a massive series that even got a Patent) is an example of early military and political propaganda in the mass market of consumer reading. The horrors of war are studiously glossed over and World War 1 is instead depicted as a grand adventure.
 

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THE ALEXIAD​


Anna Komnenos

Digitalized translation made by Elizabeth A. Dawes in 1928.
Year of publication being 1128.
Downloaded in Onemorelibrary.
4/21/2024.

The Alexiad documents the Byzantine Empire's interaction with the First Crusade and the work of his father on trying to secure a diplomatic approach with the Catholic kingdoms, and highlights the conflicting perceptions of East and West in the early 12th century.
 

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THE ALEXIAD​


Anna Komnenos

Digitalized translation made by Elizabeth A. Dawes in 1928.
Year of publication being 1128.
Downloaded in Onemorelibrary.
4/21/2024.

The Alexiad documents the Byzantine Empire's interaction with the First Crusade and the work of his father on trying to secure a diplomatic approach with the Catholic kingdoms, and highlights the conflicting perceptions of East and West in the early 12th century.
Isn't Anna a woman? And didn't she try to usurp the throne (after creating the Alexiad in the first place to get in the good graces of her father)? I don't know the whole story.
 
Isn't Anna a woman? And didn't she try to usurp the throne (after creating the Alexiad in the first place to get in the good graces of her father)? I don't know the whole story.
This isn't true, at least a half of it. Alexios Komnenos died before the book was made, and she and her mother tried to usurp the throne from John II Komnenos, but after her husband didn't want to comply on the coup, John II exiled her to work into a monastery, where she spent the rest of her life there. During her stay in that monastery she wrote the Alexiad.
 

The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo: Written by Himself Containing a True and Full Account of the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain

Bernal Diaz

Translation. Royal Astronomical Society. 1890. Gift to the University of Toronto as consequence for their fire.
Digitized PDF made available by Internet Archive
4/21/2024

This book is a first hand account of the war between Kingdom of Spain, and the Aztec Empire. It reads like a science fiction novel of a "First Contact War" between Space Aliens and Humanity, and gives an uncompromising outsider looking in view of Meso-American culture pre-Colonialism. It also includes a foreword written by the Royal Astronomical Society of the United Kingdom that justifies the colonial project of the British Empire.
 

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A Study in Scarlet

Arthur Conan Doyle

New York and London Street & Smith Publishers. Date unknown.
Digitized PDF from Internet Archive
4/21/2024

The first book by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that introduces the Characters of Sherlock Holmes and Watson. It introduces the latter as a veteran of the Anglo-Afghan War and the Battle of Kandahar. Really different from Watson's modern interpretation as a bumbling maid servant.
 

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The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Beatrix Potter

Fredrick Warne and Co. 1902.
Digitized Copy from Internet Archive
4/21/2024

The first book by children's author Beatrix Potter, it includes her hand drawn paintings. The story is a moral lesson about a young Rabbit who is warned to not step outside the boundaries of ordered society. But being a rebellious sort, Peter decides to do just that...
 

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Pidgin English Sing-Song, or Songs and Stories in the China-English Dialect with a Vocabulary

Charles G. Leland, published by London: Trubner & Co., Ludgate Hill, 1876
Downloaded from the Internet Archive on 1/24/2024

This is a book mocking the Chinese dialect during the colonial period in China, where various European powers, alongside America and Japan, carved up China for themselves. Though racist in a way that would impress /pol/, it is worthy of preservation. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
 

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When We Get Back Home from Japan

Hume and Annarino

Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1953
Downloaded 3/23/2023 from the Internet Archive

A humorous book that obliquely mocks Japan through the habits US Servicemen picked up during the American occupation of Japan following World War 2. It's funny in retrospect, given how the "soft power" of anime has so thoroughly conquered America.
 

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Tintin in the Congo

Georges Prosper Remi
Hergé

Casterman Edition. 1931. Translated.
Digitized Copy from Internet Archive
4/21/2024

The most notorious work by Remi, under his pen name Hergé, this comic serial was published in the Belgian Magazine "Le Petit Vingtiem". It is a satirical look at the Belgian colonization of the Congo. The author would later be forced to denounce his own work. It is now considered an extreme example of European Colonialist sympathy, and is on the list of proscribed books throughout most western countries. It will most likely be formally burned and memory holed in the coming decades.
 

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Kill or Get Killed

Major Rex Applegate

The Military Service Publishing Company/Telegraph Press, 1943
Downloaded from the Internet Archive 1/20/2021

A hand-to-hand combat manual for soldiers fighting in World War 2. Readers are instructed on how to fight while unarmed or armed, how to disarm an opponent, how to snap necks and cripple enemy soldiers, and other gruesome topics. You are your own first line of defense. Nobody is coming to save you.
 

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DRACULA​


Bram Stoker

Freeditorial
Downloaded from the SEDU of Coahuila, Mexico. 4/21/2024

The novel, written in epistolary form in the form of diaries and with small jumps in time, narrates the excessive ambition for power of Dracula, a solitary, cultivated, aristocratic and terribly terrifying man who lives isolated in a decadent castle and who moves to London to achieve his ends.
 

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The Art of War​


Sun Tzu

Translated with introduction and notes by Lionel Giles, M.A. 19th May 2004
Downloaded from the Internet Archive. 4/21/2024

The book contains a detailed explanation and analysis of the 5th-century BC Chinese military, from weapons, environmental conditions, and strategy to rank and discipline. Sun also stressed the importance of intelligence operatives and espionage to the war effort. Considered one of history's finest military tacticians and analysts, his teachings and strategies formed the basis of advanced military training throughout the world.
 

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Metamorphosis​


Franz Kafka

Digitalized translation made by Ian Johnston.
Published in 1912.
Downloaded in Feedbooks.
4/24/2024

Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and subsequently struggles to adjust to this new condition.
 

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Sagas of the Icelanders / Íslendingasögur

Various Authors
Digital English and Icelandic translations provided by sagadb.org
Retrieved 12 September, 2018

One of the foremost primary sources describing ancient Norse history and culture, the Icelandic Sagas were developed and passed down in the oral tradition of Iceland, until medieval scholars recorded them in writing after the island's conversion to Christianity. The Sagas are a history of Iceland's early settlers and their descendants, and also a collection of mythological epics. More a genre than a single document, the origins of each Saga are varied and usually unknown.
 

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A.Merritt1950-07_025-600x902.jpg

The Face in the Abyss​

The Snake Mother​

Abraham Merritt

1931 first edition, collects both novels
Obtained from Internet Archive
4/21/2024

Originally serialized in The Argosy magazine during the 1920's, the novels explore how temptation exposes the true nature of a man, whether it be through greed, lust, or cowardice in the face of the unknown through the narration of Nicholas Graydon. The traditional lost world/lost race set up is turned on it's head by a genetically modified civilization far beyond the ken of man and ruled over by an ancient lamia that sees fit to examine the mettle of modern humanity.
 

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