Another uneventful days as far as the books go, but music is going better than I expected.

I started Thackeray’s Book of Snobs, but simply did not get it. I suspect the humour has dated. I tried his Men’s Wives. It has a nice balance of humour and tragedy (not exactly tragedy in the first story which has a happy ending, but a depiction of distress).

I continued reading SF with Andre Norton’s Star Soldiers, the two parts of which were originally published as separate books. When I started the second part I realised that I had read it before, and I was not that keep to re-read it (the first book is far better), I stopped there.

That brings me to one great advantage of free books: if you decide you do not like a book part way through (which has happened several times), you have not wasted any money!

I have also dipped into some non-fiction. I found a translation of part of St Augustine’s The Literal Meaning of Genesis, which Calibredid a reasonable job of converting to epub format. The book it self is not of great interest, but it disproves the misconception, shared by creationists and atheists, that creationism was the norm for Christians until the last few centuries.

I have also dipped into more non-fiction, but I will not say more until I have read more of it. One thing I wish to see is whether large and heavy books are easier to read as ebooks.

Looking for music gave me a pleasant surprise. I had expected good free music to be mostly classical. For example, I have the BBC free downloads of Beethoven’s symphonies. Sorry no link as they are no longer available. There is also unlikely to be any more free music from the BBC: the recorded music companies were upset by the competition, and, as the regulators think corporate profits are more important than utility maximisation for society as a while, it has been firmly stopped.

What I found was that Jamendo has a wide range of fairly good music. There is now an awful lot on the site, so the way to find the good stuff is by listening to their “radio” streams and looking for play lists you like.

I enjoyed some Jazz and electronic music.

Not a bad two days, and I still feel I have not even scratched the surface of what is available.