Three Hundred Aesop's Fables
Aesop
EnglishAn evening
One fable is two minutes, so it fits the gap between dinner and bed with nothing left over.
Ages 3 to 6 · Ages 7 to 12
Project Gutenberg
Volunteer-run, public domain only, since 1971
Family Space · Library
Books your family can read tonight, for nothing
A hand-checked shelf of genuinely free books, plus live search of Open Library.
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Short, famous, and hard to dislike. If nobody in the house reads yet, start on this shelf.
The Great Indian Epics: The Stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata
EnglishA week of bedtimes
Both epics in one readable volume, for a house where everyone knows the names and nobody has read them.
Ages 7 to 12 · Teenagers
Project Gutenberg
Volunteer-run, public domain only, since 1971
Gitanjali
Rabindranath Tagore
EnglishAn evening1910
Tagore's own English translation, the one that won the Nobel. A poem a night is enough.
Teenagers · Grown-ups
Project Gutenberg
Volunteer-run, public domain only, since 1971
National Digital Library of India
CollectionMany Indian languagesA fortnight or more
Run by the Ministry of Education out of IIT Kharagpur. Textbooks, exam material and scholarship, free with an Indian sign-in.
Teenagers · Grown-ups
National Digital Library of India
Ministry of Education, hosted at IIT Kharagpur
Standard Ebooks
CollectionEnglishA fortnight or more
The same public domain books as Gutenberg, re-typeset by volunteers so they look like a real book on a phone.
Teenagers · Grown-ups
Standard Ebooks
Volunteers who re-typeset public domain books properly
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
EnglishAn evening1843
Five short chapters, one a night. Also the best story ever written about what money does to a person.
Ages 7 to 12 · Teenagers · Grown-ups
Project Gutenberg
Volunteer-run, public domain only, since 1971
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
EnglishAn evening1865
Short enough to finish in a weekend and odd enough that children remember it for life.
Ages 7 to 12 · Teenagers
Project Gutenberg
Volunteer-run, public domain only, since 1971
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
EnglishA week of bedtimes1892
Twelve separate stories, so it survives being put down for a month.
Teenagers · Grown-ups
Project Gutenberg
Volunteer-run, public domain only, since 1971
Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse
EnglishAn evening1922
A German novel set on the Ganges. Two evenings, and it tends to arrive at the right time in someone's life.
Teenagers · Grown-ups
Project Gutenberg
Volunteer-run, public domain only, since 1971
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