Books and bytes

Any of you guys used DailyLit yet? Free service. Breaks down books into small doses (~5 min. each), and sends them to you once a day until the book is finished.

I thought I'd give it a try with a semi-short book, you know, in case I didn't like the service. Most of the releases are classics, i.e. titles now in the public domain. However, I came across Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, released in 2002 under a Creative Commmons license. You can buy a hard copy from Amazon here.

Honestly, I'm not much of a sci-fi fan -- at least not as much as some folks I know, Paul included -- but the prologue sounded interesting. And DailyLit was releasing it in 65 parts (it's a roughly 200-page book in print). Two months is much more manageable than some of the other titles. Les Miserables is a mighty 679 installments -- nearly two years. Even my dear Walden tops 120 installments.

But Down and Out was a mere 65. Two months. I could handle two months. I received my first installment Thursday, and my second on Friday. Saturday, I used the "receive next installment now" feature to send myself seven more. Today, I downloaded and read the rest of the book, which pretty much negates the point of using a daily service to read snippets of books. A lazy Sunday curled up with a book -- even an electronic book. Very cool.