My vacation in the Public Domain

No brochure had to tell me where to go this Feb vacation. But my wallet and gas prices did. No matter. I went to that place I love the best and found me a boatload of free stuff. I love to read but I love to read flyfishing books that focus more on history than travel or tackle. Stuff like the red coats fly fishing during the Rev War or NY’s booming brook trout years during the Civil War. Sherman took a few minutes to fly fish before his rage on the South. Anyway, I found free books not at local libraries but ‘in the Public Domain’. As you may or may not know, books published before 1923 are without copyright so downloading them or viewing them online can be done without violating copyright laws. Here is what you do, go to

The Internet Archive (300,000 public domain books)
Google Books (1.7 million public domain books)
Universal Library (600,000 public domain books)
Project Gutenberg (20,000 public domain books)
WikiSource (69,000 pages)
Microsoft digitizing project
Open library http://www.openlibrary.org/details/historyofflyfish00hillrich

Because I am interested in local books (New England), I found “With Fly Rod and Camera” by Edward Samuels http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=YzYCAAAAYAAJ&dq=with+fly+rod+and+camera&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=hyPojfk_hA&sig=l5OVBN37GPYU6-pKPQqle7hiAE8 . This gem will help keep the winter blahs at bay.

But my greatest find was the book by John Burroughs’ “Speckled Trout”. Wow! Not to mention "Favorite Flies and their Histories" by Orvis

And although not a fishing book, G.K. Chesterton’s “The Everlasting Man” was added to my list.

So you might be wondering how I will read these books stored on my computer. I will read some online, print some parts of some books, and I will send some to Public Domain Reprint service http://www.publicdomainreprints.org/ .Here they will bind the book for me.

Happy reading!