Project GutenbergJan 1, 2025

HAPPY PUBLIC DOMAIN DAY!

Books which will enter the US public domain:

William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon (as serialized in Black Mask magazine)
John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold (Steinbeck's first novel)
Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica
Oliver La Farge, Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story
Patrick Hamilton, Rope

#books #literature #publicdomain
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Show threadProject GutenbergJan 1, 2025
Arthur Wesley Wheen, the first English translation of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Agatha Christie, Seven Dials Mystery
Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That
E. B. White & James Thurber, Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (only the original German version, Briefe an einen jungen Dichter)
Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Morals
Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee), The Roman Hat Mystery
#books
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Show threadAlex makes autism funJan 1, 2025
@gutenberg_org curious that E. B. White of Strunk&White's Zombie Grammar Plague worked on a sex guide. Not sure I should trust anything he has to say on the subject.
Show threadokanogen VerminEnemyFromWithinJan 6, 2025
@WizardOfDocs @gutenberg_org
Yes, why take the good parts about writing in the active voice from a "Zombie Grammar Plague" when you can be a "technical writer" instead. Clarity is for proles.
🤣
Show threadAlex makes autism fun

@Okanogen not sure whether you're being sarcastic with me or at me.

But I agree with you that Strunk and White care more about writing prettily as a class marker than about writing clearly, and they do both badly.

Jan 6, 2025 at 9:10pmWeb
Show threadokanogen VerminEnemyFromWithinJan 6, 2025
@WizardOfDocs
I doubt Strunk and White care about anything much any more, being long dead. Did they care at the time? Hard saying not knowing. I do find it hilarious the hatred this ancient pamphlet inspires, though. It's not the CGEL, oh noes! The tone! So preachy! Lol.
Maybe if people stopped debating about it, it will go away.
Show threadAlex makes autism funJan 6, 2025

@Okanogen oh, I would love for the Elements of Style to fade into obscurity, and for E. B. White to be known only as the author of Charlotte's Web.

And who knows? With young people writing more now than the vast majority of their forebears, maybe we're well on our way to a more tolerant literary world.

Show threadokanogen VerminEnemyFromWithinJan 6, 2025
@WizardOfDocs
Spoiler alert: not gonna happen.
Obviously people who hate it write just fine, and its utility is especially useful for technical writers, which I have been doing in one capacity or another for nearly 40 years. Anyway, it's not like some weird literary suicide pact, more like a Pizza Hut salad bar, take what you like and leave the rest.