ELECTRONIC BOOKS ARE nothing new to the folks at the Gutenberg Project volunteer organization. They have been lovingly digitising, editing and publishing public-domain texts since 1971. The 3000-plus plain-text files at www.gutenberg.net won't work with e-book readers but can be read with any word processor or text editor. The ad-supported InfoBlast reader (www.binarybliss.com/product.asp?aid=339) is helpful for indexing, searching, and marking your place.

By Scott Spanbauer