Librezine.com - Free Library Ezine for Everyone

Today, at a time when schools are closing their physical libraries down and moving their collections over to e-book format, it might be difficult to grasp how as recently as 10 years ago, people would look at these contraptions called e-book readers and wonder why anyone would need them when they could just carry a couple books with them. Now that people are completely used to ereading, they want more. They want free e-book downloads.

Now that e-book readers have made it so effortless for people to carry their entire book collections around, people want even less effort. They want to get at least some of those books without actually having to pay for them. Gratefully, there are quite a few sources that you can turn to for free e-book downloads.

Consider the thing they call the library of the future – the California-based Internet Archive that holds about 3 million books of every description. Anyone is allowed to take a book that's in the public domain (meaning, that there is no copyright on it) and they can upload the book. If you have an ancient book of some kind, you're free to go upload it for the whole world to use.

As anyone over 40 remembers all too painfully now, travel was all about planning with completely outdated information – in the form of travel guide books. You know how they say “at the time this goes to press” in newspaper ror magazine articles? Things get outdated even with newspapers that get published everyday. What does one say of travel guidebooks?

At a time when we take up-to-the-second information on hotels, airlines, attractions and restaurants for granted, it does seem completely intolerable that when you buy a book to take with you, even if it's from a major publisher like Lonely Planet, that it's at least months out-of-date. If you take a look at your guidebook and head out to the hotel without making a reservation, you might find that the hotel isn't there anymore. A lot can happen in a few months. You might find that the vaccination requirements have changed for a country, or you might find that the consulate has moved.

Ever noticed how travel guidebooks use a particular kind of language where everything seems wonderful? They aren’t just trying to give you a balanced opinions. They're trying to promote the destination, not just tell you the truth. They certainly will tell you that the area around the Taj Mahal could use a bit of a cleanup.

I have always been a fan of ghost stories and tales of horror, but there is something about true scary stories that makes them that much more interesting. I am not sure if it is the fact that it is believed to have actually happened or the possibility that you may one day encounter the place where the story is set, but true scary stories always capture my interest.

One of the true scary stories that is among my personal favorites is that of the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall. The story is of a ghost, that of Dorothy Walpole, who lived in the residence in England and died of small pox in 1726. She supposedly still roams the corridors of the building, and in 1936 a photo was snapped of the ghost which is widely believed to be the most famous ghost photo in the world. I was probably five or six when I first heard this story and I distinctly remember asking my older brother if she could ever get us. My brother told me that ghosts could not travel over water, and at the time, that was enough for me, and I was very relieved.

Remember how it used to be when e-book readers like the Kindle were first introduced? People couldn't believe that anyone would want them to pay $100 for a device to read a book on and then pay for the books as well. Why couldn't you just buy a regular book that was "software and hardware in one"? There was even a snide joke that circulated around the time about how there was this new technological book-reading wonder out that had a gigabyte of non-volatile memory, that was environmentally friendly, had a full color display and so on. You would read to the end of the piece until you realized that you were just reading about a regular printed paper book. These days, people finally have got the point about e-readers. It can be tremendously freeing to just carry a slim e-book reader that has many, many books in its memory. The only problem is as always – how do you get free e-books?

People have always known of ways of getting free regular books – you get them at libraries or borrowing from friends. How do you get free books when they are ebooks though? Well, that's what we're here to find out.

It must feel like living in the movie Brazil to work for the IRS. What must it be like to be surrounded by forms with names like 1099, 1031 and 501c3 the whole time? Well, that's their way of life there – everything that they know, do or ever want to do is defined by a section of the Internal Revenue Code. With that little philosophical aside aside, let's take a look at how you get a bit of tax exemption when you are a nonprofit – especially what the IRS says about what they call 501c3 organizations.

501c3 organizations. What a way to refer to a nonprofit organization that works for religious, scientific, literary, educational or animal-rights causes. Nevertheless, you probably don't want to waste any time arguing with them about having your life's work reduced to a number. What you want instead is to understand the IRS code so that you can save a little money to use for what really matters.