DailyLit.com

DailyLit.com is a wonderful little service which delivers novels (mostly old public domain material, but also a few current works by Cory Doctorow and other generous types) in daily installments, right to your email account or RSS reader. I first tried it a few months ago, with Kate Chopin's The Awakening, but found that novel a bit of a trudge and gave up after just a few installments.

Now, as my Summer of Classics draws to a close, I've given it another try, this time with Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I'm a quarter of the way through this one and am enjoying it quite a bit, so much so that I'm ordering several installments each day. (At the bottom of each installment, there's a link to click on if you want the next one delivered immediately.) I've decided that reading in this format is already enough of a challenge that if you're not totally taken with the story (as I was with Chopin) it will be very difficult to see it through to the end, so you might have to hunt around a bit to find a piece that really grabs you. Although I already have Heart of Darkness at home, in an old Norton Anthology, I'm going to resist the temptation to read it the old-fashioned way and stick with the high-tech method. I'm using the email option for this one, but will probably try reading my next title via RSS.

Oh, and best of all, DailyLit is completely free. So there's really no good reason for you to not check it out.