DailyLit launched about three months ago. As the creators of the site say, “We created DailyLit because we spent hours each day on email but could not find the time to read a book. Now the books come to us by email. Problem solved.”
Though it isn’t an overt attempt to bring us back to the dawn of modern literature, those with truly long memories will remember that most of the works of Dickens and Twain originated as newspaper serials. DailyLit offers several hundred public domain and creative commons licensed titles in e-mail installments (which take about five minutes each to read) sent to you on your schedule. Their idea came from the New York Times, which “serialized a few classic works in special supplements a few summers ago. We wound up reading books that we had always meant to simply by virtue of making them part of our daily routine of reading the newspaper. The only thing we do more consistenly than read the paper is read email. Bingo! We put together a first version and began reading War of the Worlds and Pride and Prejudice. We showed it to friends, added more books and features at their request, and presto, DailyLit was born.”
They’ve recently added a some genre titles, both old and new, and look like they want to continue expanding their offerings. Presently, under the heading “science fiction,” they have 12 books available (one fantasy and four horror). The genre titles available at press time are listed below.
For more information, or to subscribe, see www.dailylit.com.
Current DailyLit science fiction offerings:
Flatland by Edwin Abbott (in 37 parts)
A Place So Foreign and Eight More by Cory Doctorow (88 parts)
Down and Out int he Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow (65 parts)
Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow (70 parts)
Overclocked by Cory Doctorow (107 parts)
The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit (94 parts)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (83 parts; cross-listed under horror, too)
Accelerando by Charles Stross (162 parts)
From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne (115 parts)
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne (111 parts)
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (38 parts)
War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (73 parts)
Under fantasy, they currently list four titles:
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (13 parts)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (83 parts; cross-listed under science fiction, too)
Dracula by Bram Stoker (187 parts)
Famous Modern Ghost Stories by various authors (115 parts)
There’s only one fantasy title currently listed, but at five minutes a day, it should take quite a while to read the 448 parts of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.