Books are everywhere, and in many forms. You won’t have trouble finding them. Since they’re all over the place, you have absolutely no excuse not to read. If you don’t have money to buy books, there are online libraries full of free ebooks.
Charles W Eliot, former President of Harvard University, once said, “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” Never has a truer word been spoken. Books feed our mind and soul. When we read, we learn something new. Reading makes us smarter and keeps us sharp as we age.
Image from Adobe Stock
Set A Reading Goal
Do you want to read more, but eventually lose interest after several months? Then why not try setting reading goals? Start small, then work your way up to the bigger stuff. If it takes you months to finish a book, try finishing a certain number of pages per day. You may find yourself naturally reading more if you are aware of your own progress.
Tools To Help Set Reading Goals
Online tools like a word counter keep track of the length of each book you read by computing the word count or character count of a page.
Word Counter
A word counter lets you count words, characters, paragraphs, sentences, and pages in real-time! Writers leverage it to improve word choice and write styling, and to detect grammar mistakes and plagiarism.
Pomodoro Timer
Meanwhile, if you want to boost focus, manage energy, and avoid burnout while you read, an online tool called the Pomodoro Timer can help you achieve your goals. The Pomodoro Timer uses the Pomodoro technique and Pomodoro method, both developed by Italian businessman Francesco Cirillo back in the 1980s.
The Pomodoro technique was created to increase an individual’s productivity, and it is known to be very effective. It has been championed by famous designers, developers, writers, and other individuals who need to turn out regular amounts of creative work.
So, how can the Pomodoro method help you be a speed reader? It’s really simple, actually. It is all a game of cause and effect—when you manage time better, you focus better, you pay more attention to what you read. And when your concentration improves, you will naturally be enticed to read more.
Ebook Popularity
In the last several years, reading has taken on a different form. With the advent of technology, print books are getting replaced by digital books or ebooks. What are ebooks? Ebooks are books in electronic format. You can download ebooks to a computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone, on any other kind of reading device. It can have a table of contents, numbered pages, and pictures and graphics, exactly like a printed book!
Image from Adobe Stock
Ebook Benefits
More and more are readers discovering the benefits and advantages of ebooks. Firstly, with ebooks, you can carry a whole library’s worth on your device, as long as you have large disk space. Imagine an entire library, at your fingertips? You can’t do that with a printed book!
Smaller Storage
And when you order an ebook, you can get your book almost instantly! You don’t have to wait for the arrival of the books in the stores. Third, keeping an ebook on your device consumes only a small amount of space. When your device runs out of space, you can just upload your ebook collection to a cloud storage option and forget about physical storage altogether. This is easier and much more convenient than having your desk, room, or bag cluttered up with traditional texts.
Font Adjustment
Another helpful feature found only in ebooks is font adjustment. When you use an ebook, you can easily alter the font size of your text when your eyes get strained. You can’t do the same with a printed book. When your eyes get tired, you have no choice but to stop reading the book!
Price Point
In addition, if you are on a budget, ebooks are often cheaper than physical books because they do not involve any printing cost. Plus, there are a lot of free books online. You can get as many books as you want in the comfort of your own home!
But you need to be careful, too. Never download pirated ebooks! Always purchase books and other digital content from legitimate retailers. Some ebooks may contain malicious software that can inject viruses, spyware, and malware into your computer!
Years ago, a site called Download1.ch existed. It was a download hub for ebooks, Android apps, and Bollywood songs. Download1.ch paved the way for more ebook sites. Now there are hundreds, even thousands of ebooks to choose from!
Where To Download Free Ebooks?
Are you now ready to download all your favorite ebooks? In order to get you going in the right direction, we’ve made a list of the top 10 websites where you can legally download free ebooks! Check them out, and see if you’ve got a fave!
1. Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is the oldest online library in the world. It’s got over 60,000 books to read! This site is the first ever provider of free ebooks. When you get there, you will be surprised at how easy it is to access the rest of the content of the site. You can search by title, author, subject, or language.
However, don’t expect to see a lot of Tom Clancy and Stephen King books in there, Project Gutenberg focuses more on classic titles like Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen, or The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
2. Baen
If you love science-fiction, you better run over to Baen. Baen has a huge selection of some of the best science fiction novels in the universe! You can read any of the novels online, or you can download them in five formats—Ms Reader, Palm, Rocket ebook, RTF, and HTML. Want to learn more about your favorite titles and authors? Baen’s got its own podcast called the Baen Free Radio Hour. You can listen to all of the episodes straight from the site!
3. Free Computer Books
The site offers a wide variety of online books on computer science topics. You’ll find books on so many genres. Some of the most popular ones are books on computer engineering, data science, Java, etc. If you’re a teacher, you can get your students ahead of the game with this site because each book comes with its own set of lecture notes!
4. Wikibooks
Wikibooks is a free library of educational textbooks. You’ll find subjects ranging from humanities and language, to science and computer engineering.
When we visited the site, we were most impressed by some of their subsites—Wikimedia Cookbook contains recipes from different parts of the world, while Wikijunior offers dozens of ebooks for kids 12 years of age and below. If you enjoy socializing with other readers, Wikibook’s got community features including a digital forum and reading room.
5. Sacred Texts
Are you fond of spiritual books? If it’s been a while since you picked up a book on spirituality, there’s no better time than now to do so. Spiritual books propel you into a much higher way of living. You discover things about yourself and the world that may have puzzled you for years.
When you’re ready to take the leap, Sacred Texts is a good starting point. It contains the world’s latest collection of free ebooks on religion, folklore, mythology, etc. The site’s put together a full list of books categorized by either title or author. Here’s a cool feature we like—if you begin a book from here, and you suddenly need to do something else, you can save pages for offline reading.
6. Scribd
Scribd’s one of the best ebook sites we’ve laid our eyes on. We’d recommend it in our sleep! Trust us when we say, you will never run out of stuff to read when you visit the site! Scribd offers all sorts of reading materials, from ebooks and magazines, to sheet music, documents, and a whole lot more! Millions of documents are published every month, and everything is neatly organized by category.
Plus, if you like to catch up on reading while in traffic or while waiting in line at the supermarket, Scribd has a mobile companion app, making it perfect for people who are always on the go! However, Scribd is free for only 30 days. You need to get a subscription when you’re done with the free 30-day trial, and it costs around $10 a month.
7. International Children’s Digital Library
If you’re a parent looking for a good ebook for your kid, you know where to go! International Children’s Digital Library or ICDL offers a wide selection of international children’s books. You’ll be glad to know that you won’t have a hard time locating your favorite book, ICDL has a tab search engine that lets users search books by country, or from its recently added list.
8. Free-eBooks net
This site features a broad selection of online books, from fiction and non-fiction, to textbooks, scholarly texts, classics, etc! If you love to read, but haven’t had time to sit down with a good book, Free-eBooks.net also has audiobooks that can be downloaded right to your phone, providing you with a great listening companion for your workout, morning commute, or anytime your hands are busy but your ears are free. However you can only download five books in a month, so choose wisely and only download your faves!
9. ManyBooks
ManyBooks is a site that’s been around for more than 10 years. The site offers a carefully curated collection of free and discounted ebooks for people to download and enjoy. Download as many times as you want! The ebooks are available in various formats, such as MOBI, EPUB, and PDF.
When it first arrived online, back in the mid-200s, much of the site’s collection mirrored Project Guttenberg’s. Over the years, ManyBooks eventually took on an identity of its own, with the addition of thousands of self-published works available to whoever wants to download them at zero charges.
10. Library Genesis
This site is a free-to-read content search engine. You’ll find everything from ebooks to magazines here. As of this writing, the Library Genesis indexes approximately 3 million free ebooks and 60 million articles. It would take a few lifetimes to read and comprehend everything offered here.
A word of warning—since it is a search engine, browsing for books might be very difficult, almost impossible even. If you need to look for a book, the closest thing you can do is use the Authors drop-down in the navigation bar, and from there you can look for the name of your desired author.
So there you go! We hope this encourages you to read. We cannot overstate the case for reading. If you don’t like to read, there are a lot of tools to help you develop an interest in it!
Productivity Tools
Speaking of tools, earlier, we talked about two tools you can use to enhance your reading experience. They are the word counter and Pomodoro Timer, and you can find them both on Word Count Tool. To access them, you just need to go to the site. They’re very easy to use, you use them as much as you can for free!
This guide walks you through all the necessary steps:
Word Counter
- Copy your target text.
- Paste your text in the big box.
- Above the text box, you will see four tabs. If you want to change the font of your text, go to the first tab. Now, if you want to change the size of your font, go to the Size tab. The font sizes available for use are in the range of 10 to 14. Moving on to the third tab, if you want to alter the letter case of your text, you need to click on this tab. Meanwhile, the fourth and last tab is the Clear tab which lets you erase the current text from the box and start with a fresh, blank one.
- Once the text is inside the box, you will automatically be able to check your Word, Character, Sentence, and Paragraph count. Take note of how much you read in a week, in a day, or in a year!
Pomodoro Timer
- When you reach the Word Count Tool landing page, click on the Pomodoro Timer tab on the upper right side of the screen.
- You will be brought to the Pomodoro Timer page. From there, you’ll see three different timers, the standard Pomodoro Timer app, the Custom Timer, and the One-Time timer.
The first one, the Pomodoro Timer app, is composed of 25-minute cycles with 5-minute breaks in between. How can you apply this to your reading? Let’s say, you decide to read for 25 minutes without interruptions. You go to the Pomodoro Timer on the Word Count tool site, type in the time in the square box, press the start button, and let the site do the rest!
When you’re done with the first 25 minutes, the site will signal you to take a 15-minute break. It’s up to you if you want to read for another 25 minutes. As you go through the cycle, your brain will be taught to focus more. And when you focus more, you get to read more, and process whatever you read more quickly!
The second Pomodoro timer you will see is the Custom timer. Here, you can decide the length of each time period. Input the hours, minutes, even the seconds. Simply type in the digits duration using the “+” and “-” keys on each side of the timer, and you are good to go! This will help you stay focused and on track while you read.
The third and last timer is a One-Time Timer—to use it, you just input the duration you want. Be precise, include the exact number of hours, minutes, and seconds. This is the best timer to use if you want to do something that isn’t in your normal routine. For example, if you want to read a few more pages during your hourly session at the treadmill, the One-Time Timer won’t let go until you finish your task.
Final Thoughts
Everyone knows the story of Ludwig van Beethoven. He is one of the most widely respected composers of classical music. Did you know Beethoven continued to compose even while losing his hearing, and created some of his best works after being totally deaf?
You might be thinking, that’s a great story, but how does it relate to reading? Here’s how—whether you realize it or not, knowledge is something no one will ever be able to take away from you.
Author L. Frank Baum said it best when we said “No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.” Keep on adding to the treasure by reading books as often as you can. It’s one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve your life, to get more from life itself. It will be a decision you won’t regret! So download all the free ebooks you want!