Show HN: E-Book Site for Classics | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: E-Book Site for Classics

bookeyes.co

94 pointskermittd33 comments

Though the site is visually appealing, I fail to understand why nearly 550kB of JS is needed (548kB to be specific). A site like this could get away rather well with just using on-hover and some elegant links.

Overall a decent idea, but it's not one that needs to be this complicated. I feel as if designing a better "classics" landing for the Project Gutenberg might be a better idea. [0]

[0] - https://www.gutenberg.org/

On the memory side, I actually don't know why the site is so large compared to its relatively small amount of content. Do you believe that it's large because of the images that you think are unnecessary or because of some technical defect?

I believe mc42 wants to know why your JavaScript files are so big. E.g. why are you using the full jQuery library AND the minified library? All your JavaScript should probably be minified.

Gotcha

It looks like you might have designed this website with Weebly. If so, Weebly serves several JavaScript files to the user, which combine to a rather large file size. I'm not sure there's much you can do about that, though, other than just not using Weebly.

Yes I did.Interesting I did not realize that would have an effect on size or load time.I am ui/ux designer so besides ios apps the only website I've ever stood up on my own is for some ruby on rails tutorial.

I'll try to switch off as soon as that is feasible

FYI: A while back I've started to put together a world classics bookshelf using plain text w/ markdown formatting and auto-published with a GitHub Pages (Jekyll) theme - see http://worldclassics.github.io Still early (e.g. world classics for now include The Trial by Franz Kafka and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.) Cheers. PS: The idea is that you can easily change the book design (thanks to markdown and github pages/jekyll themes); see https://github.com/bookdesigns for more (free) book designs.

There are a lot of these sites already, but I like the layout you've gone for.

You really need to add more books though. I count only 11 (!)

Trying to decided the greatest books of all time is obviously divisive, but there's a pretty good consensus on what makes up the greats of classical literature. You don't have to (and shouldn't) wait for people to suggest them to you.

A good start would be adding everything listed here.

80+ free classics for download: http://www.planetebook.com/

The "top" charts on gutenberg.org itself: http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top

Full list from "1001 Books to read before you die", copied from Listology before it went down: http://cc-gems.blogspot.com/2006/10/e-book-books-to-read-bef... http://cc-gems.blogspot.com/2006/10/e-book-books-to-read-bef... http://cc-gems.blogspot.com/2006/10/e-book-books-to-read-bef... http://cc-gems.blogspot.com/2006/10/e-book-books-to-read-bef...

Yes, I definitely need to add more books! I'll probably need to add a search capability, that actually works, on the site as well once I put up enough titles.

Though I don't "have" to wait for people's suggestion I really like that aspect of it. Thanks for those links as well I'll be sure to use them!

I like it. I have often thought that there should be a more obvious way to find the good books on Gutenberg. Simply providing a small but choice selection, as you do, is one valid approach.

As a bonus, you could provide different formats.

One way to narrow down the list is to use the recommended reading list for the SAT.

[1] https://www.powerscore.com/sat/help/reading_list.cfm

Thanks! Yes I definitely need other formats and plan on adding them soon.

Looks like these are just epubs rehosted direct from Project Gutenberg. Why not just go to gutenberg.org instead?

They are just rehosted from Project Gutenberg. I think their interface/experience is terrible

I think I'd agree, but they are trying to solve very different problems. I'm not sure your UI would scale to 53,000 titles either.

Why should it need to?

Why shouldn't it?

I'm working on a large research project, and with ~5,000 references, managing, accessing, annotating, classifying, rating, and integrating in a workflow the references ... is an absolute PITA.

Because there's value in sites that highlight a few works as well, which is the purpose of OP's site. Managing 5,000 references is a pain, but there's no indication that was the problem OP was trying to solve.

Hi! OP here. I would like to expand it but yes cracking the UI, which I really like right now, with so many titles is a little more complex.

My plan is to actually host tens of thousands of titles but highlight between 9-18 titles and implement a search feature, that actually works, for author or title.

If you're still taking notes: there's a standard for information on books. Library catalogs. In particular, MARC format.

Titles, authors, genres, publication dates, subjects, publishers, languages (the amount of online information not clearly categorised by langauage is ... annoying).

In my use of Pocket, what I'd really like is the ability to both see how many titles are grouped under a tag, and to get a visualisation of relationships amongst tags.

I also made a similar project to store personal books at https://bookstrap.ga/ The books are in my native language but any language works.

Recommendations:

"Your home for the classics" is ... a bit generous. "Your home for 11 classics" is rather closer the truth.

Please indicate what the specific format is. Neither the homepage nor the About page indicate this. Given that e-book formats exist as: ePub, MOBI, DJVU, fb2, PDF, PS, and more (I'm going off the Pandoc manpage largely here), clarity would be appreciated. (Multi-format output could also be useful.)

There are ... a lot of classics. Project Gutenberg has some 53,000 texts. There are many more texts on sites such as The Internet Archive or HathiTrust, largely as scanned-in pages presented as PDF or other formats (and with OCR of varying degrees of accuracy).

A pass-through to Gutenberg which would output formats on-the-fly might be of use.

Categorisation and cross-referencing of works likewise.

I added The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. (unsure if on Project Gutenberg, but it's at least free on Amazon). btw, when I submitted the form the thank you message was off-white text on a white background.

I'll update it so the message can be seen and also add The Time Machine.

The Time Machine is up now

Why no mobi? Kindles must be most popular dedicated ereaders.

I agree and am working on it

Hey everyone! If you submitted book suggestions, as long as there in the public domain ;) I'll be putting them up today.

I hate the way Gutenberg, and thus your site, mangles quotation marks and apostrophes.

Just updated to include suggested books: Mediations, The Time Machine, and Walden Pond! More book suggestions will be implemented throughout the day.

It's a fine project to undertake, but this is a free feature of Kobo (software and devices).

When clicking on a book link on mobile nothing happens.

I've had that problem as well and am trying to fix it. For some reason the mobile build is unreponsive at times.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com