advice for free reading material during the shut down

[awa]

In short unable to visit the library I am running low on things to read.

Does anyone have a suggestion for their favorite web serials and so on. Looking for free complete works.

[Sermil]

At least in my area, a lot of libraries are still lending out ebooks. (And even giving out library cards virtually; you don't need to come in)

I'm partial to Sluggy Freelance (http://sluggy.com/), though it's not complete. (Supposedly wrapping up soon -- we'll see)

[Gnoman]

Baen Publishing has a lot of their back catalog available for free. The best way to brows these offerings is the (authorized) archive of their pack-in CDs (they include a CD full of E-books in most of their hardcover releases) at the Fifth Imperium (http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/).

[PoeticallyPsyco]

I quite liked both Worm (https://parahumans.wordpress.com/) and Pact (https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/).

The former is a dark superhero story about Taylor, a girl with the power to control bugs and a determination to do the right thing, though in practice it often becomes "the wrong things for the right reasons". The first few pages are really dark due to a focus on bullying, but to quote TV Tropes, "Over the first few plot arcs, though, the story shifts away from the hellish landscape that is contemporary high school towards the more uplifting setting of a bombed out city at the mercy of a roving band of psychopaths".

Pact is by the same author, and is about Blake Thorburn, who has over the course of a few days inherited a creepy house with a mysterious library, a reflection that can move and talk independent of him, and a slew of supernatural threats bent on ensuring he won't be maintaining the family legacy.

Overdrive (https://spl.overdrive.com/) is the site I use to access the library and read ebooks. You can just read them in your browser, but if you want to download them, use the Overdrive app if you're on the computer or the Libby app if you're on the phone (for whatever reason, neither plays well on the wrong device).

Would you be interested in webcomics as well? I've got a whole list of completed ones I could recommend.

[awa]

I quite liked both Worm (https://parahumans.wordpress.com/) and Pact (https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/).

The former is a dark superhero story about Taylor, a girl with the power to control bugs and a determination to do the right thing, though in practice it often becomes "the wrong things for the right reasons". The first few pages are really dark due to a focus on bullying, but to quote TV Tropes, "Over the first few plot arcs, though, the story shifts away from the hellish landscape that is contemporary high school towards the more uplifting setting of a bombed out city at the mercy of a roving band of psychopaths".

Pact is by the same author, and is about Blake Thorburn, who has over the course of a few days inherited a creepy house with a mysterious library, a reflection that can move and talk independent of him, and a slew of supernatural threats bent on ensuring he won't be maintaining the family legacy.

Overdrive (https://spl.overdrive.com/) is the site I use to access the library and read ebooks. You can just read them in your browser, but if you want to download them, use the Overdrive app if you're on the computer or the Libby app if you're on the phone (for whatever reason, neither plays well on the wrong device).

Would you be interested in webcomics as well? I've got a whole list of completed ones I could recommend.

worm and pact were both great I agree

web-comics are good as well

[Rynjin]

Ward (the Worm sequel) will be finishing soon; about 3-4 more chapters I'd expect unless some very major twist happens.

A Practical Guide to Evil is also on its last book, and is quite good. A hell of a lot better than Ward IMO, but the former is still solid enough.

The Wandering Inn starts off rough but is now my favorite piece of written word media ever. It's nowhere near completing, but there's enough content already to tide you over for plenty of time. About 30 books worth, maybe more. Probably a lot more.

Into the Mire has a completed first book (which does act as an actual stopping point; it's written more like an actual book that's meant to be published some day) and an ongoing second book. It has a good writing style. Reminds me a lot of Glen Cook.

Forge of Destiny is the only good xianxia I've ever read.

That's about it for now.

[awa]

ill take a look at those

[Seppl]

Mother of Learning finished recently. That one will give you a good few weeks or months of reading. I had a lot of fun and even read it twice, despite the length. There is a dedicated thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?550034-Our-Time-Loop-is-Different-The-Awesomeness-that-is-quot-Mother-of-Learning-quot) here in this forum, giving a short introduction in the first few posts. Of course, you should be careful of spoilers when looking at that thread! Read at most the first three posts.

[Rynjin]

Mother of Learning finished recently. That one will give you a good few weeks or months of reading. I had a lot of fun and even read it twice, despite the length. There is a dedicated thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?550034-Our-Time-Loop-is-Different-The-Awesomeness-that-is-quot-Mother-of-Learning-quot) here in this forum, giving a short introduction in the first few posts. Of course, you should be careful of spoilers when looking at that thread! Read at most the first three posts.

Oh yeah!

It's probably way better when you're not waiting months between chapters, too.

[SaintRidley]

The Deathworlders (https://deathworlders.com/) is an absolute hulk of a read, and completely worth it.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

web-comics are good as well

*cracks knuckles*

Let's split this into a few categories:


True Villains (https://www.truevillains.com/comic.php?P=2007-08-22~N~Saga%20One~.jpg) -- Sebastian is finally out of jail for his well-motivated but politically inconvenient heroism... and is promptly shanghaied into working for an evil mastermind. To his surprise, he finds himself rather enjoying being on the opposite side of the moral spectrum. Fantasy.

House of Stars (https://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/house-of-stars/list?title_no=1620) -- A fairy tail about a girl who must accomplish three tasks for the queen of the mysterious land she finds herself in. Innocent and charming; beautiful art.

Chorus of the Neverborn (https://www.neverborncomic.com/?comic=chorus-page1) -- a dark fantasy in the setting of the TTRPG Exalted. Follows two villains and their kids as the world does its damnedest to drag them figuratively and literally back into hell (and mostly succeeds).

DM of the Rings (https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612) -- What if The Lord of the Rings was a D&D campaign? Well, actually, it would be a pretty railroady affair, with not enough loot and a particularly annoying omnipotent DMPC... but the players are determined to have fun with it!

Parallel Dementia -- It hurts me, but I can't in good conscience recommend this one, since the domain has lapsed and so only about half the comic can actually be viewed. If you come across an opportunity to read the whole thing, though, it's really quite good. It's spiritual successor/reboot The Sword Interval (https://www.webtoons.com/en/supernatural/sword-interval/list?title_no=486) isn't complete yet, but certainly looks to be getting close, and is also excellent.

Dominic Deagan: Oracle for Hire (https://www.dominic-deegan.com/comic/0001-20020521/) -- This one's somewhat polarizing. Overall, I liked it, but I can see why others didn't. Follows the adventures of the titular seer Dominic, using his foresight to solve problems from idiot townspeople losing their keys to going toe to toe with powerful mages to save the lives of those he loves to epic duels for the fate of the whole world.



Supervillainous (http://supervillainous.spiderforest.com/comic/comic-1-work-and-family/) -- It's hard to juggle work and family, especially if you work from home. Especially especially if said home is your flying fortress because you're the Crimson Claw, the world's most infamous super villain.

A Miracle of Science (https://www.project-apollo.net/mos/) -- Love! Giant Robots! Lasers! In a solar system where mad science is a real disease, Benjamin Prester (a law enforcement officer specializing in Science Related Memetic Disorder) must team up with Caprice Quevillion (forensic scientist and representative of the Martian hive mind) to stop a particularly dangerous and ambitious mad scientist bent on world conquest.

Mare Internum (https://www.marecomic.com/) -- It's been 5 months since the comic ended, and it's still in the top 20 on topwebcomics.com (or at least it was until today, when the ratings reset with the start of the month). A psychological comic set in the near future, and the space program to Mars turned out not to be far enough for our protagonists to outrun their problems. And then an accident forces them to confront them head-on. Fair warning, this comic's got some heavy stuff.

CARL (https://www.webtoons.com/en/slice-of-life/carl/list?title_no=1216) -- the life of the world's first robotic therapist, who has unexpectedly gained sentience. Mostly slice of life.

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja (http://drmcninja.com/newreaders.php) -- ... it's absurd. It's awesome. It's Dr. McNinja. Only here will you find a gorilla receptionist with a rocket launcher, dinosaur riding banditos, an evil unicorn that's also a motorcycle, and surfing robo-Dracula. No, not a robot Dracula that can surf, a robot Dracula being used as a surfboard. Surprisingly strong overarching plot.



Krakow (http://www.krakow.krakowstudios.com/krakow/archive.php?date=20001005) -- A comedy/slice of life following the (mis)adventures of Canadian roommates Tom and Case and Case's girlfriend Kia, who just happens to be a succubus that Case summoned from hell on a whim one day. Oh, if you've read Spinnerette, it's by the same artist and set in the same universe.

Krakow 2.0 (http://www.krakow.krakowstudios.com/krakow20/archive.php?date=20080121) -- Not a sequel to Krakow, it's just by the same guy. Don't blame me, I didn't make the title. Assassin extraordinaire Marilith has just one more job to pull before she retires. A simple kidnap, followed by a simple ransom. Watch in awe at how things go horribly, horribly wrong. Lots of dark humor.

Marilith (http://www.marilith.com/archive.php?date=20041215) -- Sequel to Krakow 2.0. Can't really say much more than that without major spoilers, naturally. More dramatic and serious in tone compared to its predecessor.

Manage a 3 (https://pixietrixcomix.com/menage-a-3/for-new-readers) -- The title's a pun on how the comic centers on the three people living in an apartment (a literal 'house of three'). Some pages are still pretty NSFW, but the comic's essentially an R rated romantic comedy, and a pretty funny one (or I wouldn't be mentioning it here).

Noblesse (https://www.webtoons.com/en/action/noblesse/list?title_no=87) -- The world's most powerful... well, he's not a vampire, but in a roundabout way his species is the inspiration for the myth... anyways, he just woke up after 800 years in slumber. Now he has to adjust to modern life in a modern school. At least at first; he and his servant Frankenstein get pulled into the machinations of a worldwide conspiracy pretty rapidly. A constant escalation of threat handled fairly believably, an ever expanding roster of likable characters and villains you love to hate, and a pretty interesting (and very effective) way of handling an OP protagonist. This is one of the "Big Three" on Webtoons, and for good reason.

Hark A Vagrant (http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=1) -- jokes about historical figures, classic literature, Canada, and the occasional odd ball. No overarching plot.

Misfile (http://www.misfile.com/misfile/2004-02-22) -- A boy trapped in the body of a girl, a girl who's lost the last two years of her life, and the slacker angel who did it to them via a literal misfile in the celestial bureaucracy. Part slice of life with race cars and schoolwork, part story about being transgender, part coming-of-age, and part fantasy with angels, demons, ghosts, and a hint of something dark going on in the background. This is one of my favorites, partly because the dialogue is hilarious.

YU+ME: dream (http://yume.rosalarian.com/comic/page-001/) -- This is a weird one. Starts off as a fairly typical coming out story, until you hit about the halfway point, at which point... things go crazy. Switches plots, switches genres, switches what you though you knew. To quote Zero Punctuation: "If it's interesting and it's fun and it gives you something to talk about, then it can't be bad." (He was talking about Bioshock: Infinite, but the quote works well here, too).

Dr. Frost (https://www.webtoons.com/en/drama/dr-frost/list?title_no=371) -- The story of a psychologist who is himself incapable of feeling most emotions. Sort of like Sherlock Holmes meets CARL.

But I'm A Cat Person! (https://www.bicatperson.com/comic/happy-ninth-anniversary/) -- Shapeshifting battle monsters! Shady conspiracies! Weird magic! Gender identity!


EDIT: All of these are completed stories; including ongoing comics would likely be a race to see whether I hit the single post character limit first or went insane first.

EDIT II: Added Dr. Frost (https://www.webtoons.com/en/drama/dr-frost/list?title_no=371).

EDIT III: Added But I'm A Cat Person! (https://www.bicatperson.com/comic/happy-ninth-anniversary/).

[Khedrac]

Baen Publishing has a lot of their back catalog available for free. The best way to brows these offerings is the (authorized) archive of their pack-in CDs (they include a CD full of E-books in most of their hardcover releases) at the Fifth Imperium (http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/).

I'm going to disagree about it being the best way to view them, but this gets a little complex...

They have a significant resource they call "The Free Library" online on their website, this is not just their back catalogue, some authors have put early works that were with other publishers into it, and going to the Baen website (link (https://www.baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/2012)) is probably the only way to access this. (I don't like the new website format for browsing the books, it's horrible, but it what it is).

What is nice is that the books are not just available for online reading, they can be downloaded in a number of formats (including text) all unencrypted for offline pleasure.

When Baen used to publish hardbacks (I don't know if they still do) a significant number of them included a CD containing a selection of that author's works and other books considered related. Many of these books were not (and are not) otherwise avaiable for free and it is these CDs that Fifth Imperium have collected copies of. They should not be taken as equivalent to the Free Library as many works in the free library are not on the CDs, and many works on the CDs are not otherwise free, also there are a number of CDs not listed on the Fifth Imperium website so it is also not complete (e.g. the CD from Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold).

So what this means, is I would use the 5th Imp in conjunction with the Baen website - you should end up with more books!
Personally I would start with the 5th Imp CD links, although the list of CDs tells you nothing, the contents of each I find much easier to browse than Baen's horrble website.

PS I had not heard about 5th Imp before so thank-you very much for the link.

[LibraryOgre]

For webcomics, I suggest Schlock Mercenary. Long-running, fairly hard, sci-fi webcomic. Definitely a lot of fun, and give you a good few days of reading. Questionable Content and Something Positive are also long-running comics that I enjoy.

For libraries, if you're in the states but in a smaller town, check large cities in your state. Houston, if you're in Texas, and Denver, if you're in Colorado, both offer cards free to anyone in their state, and those let you access their ebook collections. I got through a lot of classics on audiobook because of these.

And, lastly, it's Pay What You Want, but I published Two Tales of Tellene, two short-length stories set in the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting from KenzerCo.

https://www.drivethrufiction.com/product/305996/Two-Tales-of-Tellene?affiliate_id=315505

[awa]

thanks for the suggestions that should be sufficient to get me through current dilemma.

[GiantFlyingHog]

A little late, but https://www.egscomics.com/ has been running for a long time and continues to update three times a week. Utterly bizarre, but definitely worth a read, even if some of the early chapters clearly show the author's immaturity at the time of writing.

[halfeye]

There are hundreds (thousands?) of webcomics, I read about a hundred, it's still too many to make recommendations.

There aren't so many webserials, but they are typically very long, compared to books. If this situation runs on for six months, and you don't do anything else but read, eat, shop and sleep (which is almost certainly a bad idea, though there are worse plans), you can probably get through any of them, maybe even three or four if you are a very fast reader.

So, my thoughts on webserials:

The Wandering Inn. It's a huge sprawling world, with a lot going on, and lots of points of view about it. Some people from our Earth got dumped on another world, with magic, swords, levelling and skills, there is some suggestion that the world is actually flat and there are ends to it, and the sky is higher, whatever that means. The points of view tend to be sort of rose tinted warm and fuzzy, but there is a lot of dying that goes on, and some of the bad guys have good sides too. Just too big to describe really.

The Deathworlders/ Humanity Fsck Yeah. Bigger updates than the Wandering Inn (which is saying something), but usually only once a month, as opposed twice a week. Space Opera with Brits and USAians as the main good guys, with a bodybuilding elite group as the main focus.

The gods are Barstewards. Sort of magic/cowboy crossover to start with, with a bit of a whodunnit sort of flavour, but quite often the audience (us) know things some of the characters don't. Many points of view.

A Practical guide to Evil. Magic and swords, and "names" which give powers. One main point of view character, though other points of view crop up. There tends to be a lot of flashy wordplay, particularly in dialogue.

Ward/ Parahumans 2. A series of near future Earths, with lots of people with various superpowers, some trivial, some not. The main character is very angsty, and I tend to find the battles difficult to follow.

Those are all currently updating, there are others, as mentioned in other people's posts, some of which have ended.

[GentlemanVoodoo]

In short unable to visit the library I am running low on things to read.

Does anyone have a suggestion for their favorite web serials and so on. Looking for free complete works.

Unsure of your favorite genres but Project Gutenberg. There is a lot of books that can be accessed there.

[trtl]

I recommend it cautiously, but the entire 64 book Animorph series is available for free online. You can probably read about one a day so even if you are really dedicated, Animorphs could keep you busy for two months.

As for whether or not I'd recommend Animorphs... Not really, unless you have some nostalgia with the series, the story is surprisingly good, but there is too much fluff and sub-par writing for me to recommend it to someone that isn't already interested.

I'm currently reading it because I also have nothing to do with my life, and I only vaguely remember the story from when I read it 10 years ago.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I'm going to +1 Schlock Mercenary, I will also link Nodwick (http://comic.nodwick.com/?comic=2008-01-24) and another one on the same site, PS238. (http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/12072006/)

[Cikomyr2]

The complete canon of Sherlock Holmes is free to download for an ebook

[Rogar Demonblud]

Freefall (http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff100/fv00001.htm) is still ongoing, but there's close to 3500 strips of archive to go through. It might even qualify as educational.

Plus, fluffy space piranha.

[Eldan]

The complete canon of Sherlock Holmes is free to download for an ebook

Also, I don't know if it's still a thing, but for a while, you could get the complete Sherlock Holmes read by Stephen Fry as a promo when you signed up to Audible. It's something like 50 hours.