OceanofPDF: back in business!

I was combing through my old posts and landed on the one I made when I first found the site. Clicked on the link just bc I was curious, and it took me to the website! Looks different, so I wasn't sure if it was legit or not, but then I went ahead and downloaded a book (The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner bc ofc I did) and turns out it's up and running, works perfectly well!

Reading the Reddit thread r/piracy on the topic, it sounds like they have some of the latest releases as well, so go check em out.

LINK.  https://oceanofpdf.com/

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

"Gaiman" is pronounced "gay-min" btw. Confused me for the longest time bc I wasn't sure if it was that, or if it was "guy-min", but I watched an interview where they asked him the question so now I know and am passing it onto you so that you don't make any mistakes when you talk about your favorite book (which is probably Coraline bc it's such a fun creepy book). Because your favorite is Coraline, here's a pdf:

LINK.  http://mrdavieswebsite.weebly.com/uploads/2/4/5/6/24564916/coraline.pdf

Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen

Also available on Libby, if you have a library (and library card).

LINK.  https://www.bookfreevampire.com/Fantasy/The-Queen-of-the-Tearling-by-Erika-Johansen/1.html

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

LINK.  https://joycej.kenstonlocal.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/109/2015/01/Death-of-a-Salesman.pdf

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

I just finished Hamnet by the same author and loved it, so I have to give this one a try too. I'm in the mood lol (also the following links open up in a new tab)

LINKS https://www.epub.pub/book/the-marriage-portrait-by-maggie-o-farrell (don't click on download, doesn't do anything. The continuous option just opens a crapload of ads, so read in the flip through style. Will try to get it up here asap though)

direct link to flip through, if you want to jump right into reading:
https://spread.epub.pub/epub/631be5537f49cb7e603ae977

Or read it here, on read-free-online.

Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher

https://archive.org/details/shadowspinner0000flet

https://read-online-books.com/book/read-online-shadow-spinner-free

Crossings Timeline

Alternatives to Z-Library (EXTENDED LIST)

Each website listed is free of charge, though some may require an account. Don't forget to save your TBR list on a legal site, or a physical paper, so you don't run the risk of losing any of them. If you can't find a book on a legal site, try a pirating site, but always remember to buy the physical (or kindle) copies of the books you enjoyed and appreciated so that we can keep supporting authors!

The Struggle To Unearth the World's First Author

Decades ago, archeologists discovered the work of Enheduanna, an ancient priestess who seemed to alter the story of literature. Why hasn’t her claim been affirmed?

Elizabeth Winkler

November 19, 2022

Around forty-three hundred years ago, in a region that we now call Iraq, a sculptor chiselled into a white limestone disk the image of a woman presiding over a temple ritual. She wears a long ceremonial robe and a headdress. There are two male attendants behind her, and one in front, pouring a libation on an altar. On the back of the disk, an inscription identifies her as Enheduanna, a high priestess and the daughter of King Sargon.

Some scholars believe that the priestess was also the world’s first recorded author. A clay tablet preserves the words of a long narrative poem: “I took up my place in the sanctuary dwelling, / I was high priestess, I, Enheduanna.” In Sumer, the ancient civilization of southern Mesopotamia where writing originated, texts were anonymous. If Enheduanna wrote those words, then she marks the beginning of authorship, the beginning of rhetoric, even the beginning of autobiography. To put her precedence in perspective, she lived fifteen hundred years before Homer, seventeen hundred years before Sappho, and two thousand years before Aristotle, who is traditionally credited as the father of the rhetorical tradition.

The poem, written in the wedge-shaped impressions of cuneiform, describes a period of crisis in the priestess’s life. Enheduanna’s father, Sargon, united Mesopotamia’s city-states to create what is sometimes called history’s first empire. His domain stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, encompassing modern-day Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria, including more than sixty-five cities, each with its own religious traditions, administrative system, and local identity. Although Sargon ruled from Akkad, in the north, he appointed his daughter high priestess at the temple of the moon god in the southern city of Ur. The position, though outwardly religious, was in practice political, helping to unify disparate parts of the empire. After Sargon’s death, the kingdom was torn by rebellion; the throne went briefly to Enheduanna’s brothers, and then to her nephew. In the poem, a usurper named Lugalanne—a military general who possibly led an uprising in Ur—drives Enheduanna from her place at the temple.

Goals For This Blog 2023

Things I hope to have posted by the end of next year! I know it's a lofty goal to have every single author on this blog, but I don't expect it to happen, I just would like to see it get started next year. I'll finish it someday.

POEMS (possibly have a new section for poems, like I introduced a new section for plays at the end of 2022)

Edgar Allen Poe

Robert Louis Stevenson

Emily Dickinson

Robert Frost

Alfred Lord Tennyson

PLAYS

Virginia Woolf

Shakespeare

Agatha Christie

Oresteia, The

 - Agamemnon

 - Women at the Graveside

 - Orestes in Athens

SHORT STORIES

Edgar Allen Poe

Virginia Woolf

Agatha Christie

ESSAYS

Virginia Woolf

Last Days of Socrates, The

 - Defense of Socrates, The

 - Euthyphro

 - Crito

101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

Gorgias

BOOKS

Edith Wharton

Virginia Woolf

Agatha Christie

H.G. Wells

and I'd like to get most of these books posted as well; not all of them, though, because some (like The Hobbit) are too long, while others (like The Old Man and the Sea) are too boring.