This Illiterate Brazilian's Home Speaks Volumes (collects over 10,000 books & opens library)

yahoo news.com/L.A. Times ^ | Oct 2, 2005

[nuconvert]

SAO GONCALO, Brazil

[nuconvert]

""I dream that I'm reading them," she said."

[thegreatbeast]

The average American reads five books a year, as does the average Briton. In literary-minded France, that number rises to seven.

But those are French books that literally don't mean crap.

[PeterPrinciple]

Here is a site with 16,000 free ebooks. You can order 11,000 on one free cd.


http://www.gutenberg.org/

[Sthitch]

Collecting that many books seems like an exercise in futility.

[cripplecreek]

I'm a reader raised in a family of readers. These days most of my reading is done on the internet but Christmas and birthday presents still tend to be books.

[grasshopper2]

What a heart-warming story. This man and his friends collected books and opened up his own home as a public library. And not a single penny came from official sources.

[Fred Hayek]

Article says no government funds involved. There is no telling how many people have been helped by one man's voluntary initiative (versus a government program that may seek to justify it's continued existance by limiting the progress of the people it's supposed to help). The one thing I did notice in the article is that one of the authors is Gramsci. The kind of author who would corrupt what this man is doing. But then again hopefully someone who would read Gramsci would recognize him for who he is, representing an idea that destroys such individual initiative.

Charity is best done privately by individuals who take a direct interest in improving the lives of those it is supposed to benefit. Charity done by bureaucracy becomes "just another government 'job'."

[nuconvert]

"Collecting that many books seems like an exercise in futility"

?
not to the people in his village

[PeterPrinciple]

I was just in Uganda and they were telling me that 1 million people live in the Iganga district and that there is no public library.

We explored the idea of setting up an E-library starting with the 16,000 books from the gutenberg project. With a small network of computers they could have an instant library without building a big building and buying all the physicall books. Similar to south america going directly to cell phones instead of building all the infrastructure we did.

If there is any freeper who would be interested in this project, I could use some collaboration. There must be some retired librarians here who need a good project to keep them sharp.

With scanners and volunteers they could capture some of the local history and international development reports that are there but no one has access to.

[Alexander Rubin]

I do in a productive week then what most Americans and Britons do in a year. Wow. I'm a heavy reader, but then so are most of my family members.

[nuconvert]

What about this new $100 laptop?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1494002/posts

[PeterPrinciple]

Note the books downloaded at the gutenburg project. Communist Manifesto - 80 downloads ; Wealth of Nations - 57 ; Bible - 51 downloads ; Koran - 51 downloads ---------------------------------------------- Top 100 EBooks yesterday Project Gutenberg "10K" DVD (474) The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete by Leonardo da Vinci (278) The Art of War by 孫子 (223) Kamasutra by Vatsyayana (203) Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney (200) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (195) The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (178) Meyers Konversationslexikon Band 15 by Various (171) How to Speak and Write Correctly by Joseph Devlin (162) The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 by Various (153) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (151) The Best American Humorous Short Stories (143) Modern Spanish Lyrics by Various (135) Ulysses by James Joyce (127) What Great Men Have Said About Women by Various (112) Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases by Peter Mark Roget (110) Chivalry by James Branch Cabell (108) Relativity : the Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein (106) The Chemical History of a Candle by Michael Faraday (106) The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce (103) The World War and What was Behind It by Louis P. Benezet (101) The Divine Comedy by Dante, Illustrated, Hell, Complete by Dante Alighieri (100) Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm (93) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (92) The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (92) Poems of Passion by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (91) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (90) How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett (87) Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (86) Life of Charles Dickens by Frank Marzials (86) On the Decay of the Art of Lying by Mark Twain (85) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (84) Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by Paul Lacroix (84) My Little Lady by Eleanor Frances Poynter (82) The Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx (80) Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days by Emily Hickey (80) Film: Set of 4 Atomic Bomb Test Films (79) Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (76) Alone by Edgar Allan Poe (76) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (75) Beowulf by Anonymous (74) The Doré Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete (74) The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems by Geoffrey Chaucer (73) The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas père (72) Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (71) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (71) Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie (70) Beeton's Book of Needlework by Mrs. Isabella Mary Beeton (70) Dracula by Bram Stoker (69) The Nuttall Encyclopaedia (69) The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare (67) The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (67) The Lake of the Sky by George Wharton James (67) Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol. 1 by LL.D. Rev. E. Cobham Brewer (66) The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen (66) Hand Shadows to Be Thrown upon the Wall by Henry Bursill (66) Emma by Jane Austen (63) Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (63) The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (63) The Iliad by Homer (62) Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse (62) The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition by Anonymous (62) Familiar Quotations by Various (62) The Odyssey by Homer (61) Illustrated History of Furniture by Frederick Litchfield (61) Myths That Every Child Should Know by Various (61) Paradise Lost by John Milton (60) The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (60) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (60) War and Peace by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (59) Beacon Lights of History, Volume 11 by John Lord (59) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (58) Project Gutenberg "Best Of" CD August 2003 (58) The Republic by Plato (57) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (57) Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great — Volume 01 of 14 by Elbert Hubbard (57) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (56) Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (56) Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men by Francois Arago (55) Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (54) Les trois mousquetaires by Alexandre Dumas père (54) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (53) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (52) Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner (52) The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed (52) The Bible, Old and New Testaments, King James Version by Anonymous (51) Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll (51) The Koran (Al-Qur'an) (51) Legends, Tales and Poems by Gustavo Adolfo Becquer (49) The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (48) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (47) De legende en de heldhaftige, vroolijke en roemrijke daden van Uilenspiegel en Lamme Goedzak in Vlaa (47) The Doll's House : a play by Henrik Ibsen (45) The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (45) La Cour de Louis XIV by baron Arthur Léon Imbert de Saint-Amand (45) Searchlights on Health by B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols (45) 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose (44) Books and Culture by Hamilton Wright Mabie (43) Hamlet by William Shakespeare (42) Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie (40)

[cripplecreek]

"I'm a heavy reader, but then so are most of my family members."


The family seems to be a key. Read early and read often to children and an early reader will result. My parents, grand parents and great grand parents read to my sisters and myself from a very early age. I don't remember being unable to read because I learned so early.

Somewhere around here I have a 3rd grade book report that ended up being several pages long. When we went to the school liabrary the other kids grabbed childrens books for their book reports but I went for the encyclopedias. I was lucky to have a teacher who let me write what I wanted to write about. My report was on the solar system.

[Alexander Rubin]

Similar stories. So I think you're right. Read to kids early, and find the right books, and they'll be hooked for life. I was reading Thomas Mallory's Morte D'Artur before I was 10, since I was a huge King Arthur fan. And history fan. My favourite book as a kid was actually the big Time-Life comprehensive book on WW2, by Winston Churchill.

[Physicist]

Bibliopath ping.

[Tax-chick]

"This is the only space we have to sleep. Please don't mind that it looks so poor," he told a visitor apologetically as he gingerly picked his way past a precariously leaning wardrobe and a low-slung bed. "The books kicked us out. If we're not careful, the books will kick us out of the back room too."

This would happen to us if we kept books instead of giving them to Friends of the Library!

[RightWingAtheist]

I was very much the same way as a kid. In fact, the school librarian told me to stop taking out the non-fiction books, and try the fiction. The other kids mostly took out Tintin books (I was in Ontario's French school system).

[ASOC]

The ability to read is the key to all knowledge, to write is to place that key into another's hand.

[after dark]

I'm impressed I hope someone teachers her how to read . I can't imagine not reading. I read everything romance, horror, science fiction and philosophy. Reading is my opium.