Rethinking the Classics

_Pride and Prejudice_ got a mention in the comments a few months ago, and it occurred to me that I could probably get it from manybooks.net for free, and sure enough, I could.  Yesterday I finished _Lord Darcy Investigates_ and started reading _Pride and Prejudice_ in the car as Kip drove us back from Knoxville. 

I ended up staying up half the night reading it.

( I may have to change the way I think about the classics. )

E-books: more common?

I have just downloaded _On the Origin Of Species_ by Charles Darwin from manybooks.net.  Richard Dawkins said he was a good writer (though my Dad thought he was awful; we'll see whose taste more closely matches mine), and I have the bookmark and it's free and easy, so why not?  If I don't like it, I'll just delete it; no harm, no foul.

In the process, I looked at my Firefox list of recent downloads and noticed four free e-books/stories downloaded just this afternoon.   One is from Tor Book's new website, which is giving away free e-books as a promotion; two are from Fictionwise.com, which is giving away free copies of Nebula Nominees as a promotion; and the last is Darwin's opus.

Now I'm wondering--is there a big upsurge in the availablity of e-books?  Or are they just crossing my personal horizon more because of the e-book-related Web pages and blogs I've been reading?