Civilization On A Stick

Here’s my idea for a inexpensive stocking stuffer or Secret Santa gift.  Take a bunch of the greatest works of literature that are now in the public domain, load them on a USB thumb drive, and give Civilization On A Stick.

I’ve made it even easier for you; with this Dropbox Folder you can just copy my list of 131 works, from Aeschylus to Austen, straight to your thumb drive.  I created this preliminary list from the wonderful Project Gutenberg library of public domain books.  I’ve included each book in both .epub (open source) and .mobi (Kindle-friendly) format.

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My entire folder of 131 books in two formats is just 230MB, it can easily fit on an inexpensive thumb drive. You can get a ten pack of 2GB drives on Amazon for $26, or $2.60 each.  These would fit about 1000 books each.  Why stop with my list?  Make your own create a library that you can carry on your keychain and would be the envy of anyone born before the first World War.

Here’s my list, alphabetized by author.

Author Title
Aeschylus Four Plays
Aesop Fables
Alcott Little Women
Andersen Fairy Tales
Aristophanes Lysistrata
Aristotle Poetics
Augustine Confessions
Austen Persuasion
Austen Sense and Sensibility
Austen Emma
Austen Pride and Prejudice
Barrie Peter Pan
Blake Songs of Innocence
Bronte Wuthering Heights
Bronte Jane Eyre
Buchan Thirty-Nine Steps, the
Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes
Burton (translator) Thousand and One Nights
Carrol Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Carroll Through the Looking-Glass
Cervantes Don Quixote
Chaucer Canterbury Tales
Chesterton Ball and Cross, the
Christie Mysterious Affair at Styles
Cicero Disputations
Cleland Fanny Hill
Collins Moonstone, the
Conan Doyle Hound of the Baskervilles, the
Conan Doyle Study in Scarlet, the
Conan Doyle Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Conrad Secret Agent, the
Conrad Heart of Darkness
Cooper Last of the Mohicans
Crane Red Badge of Courage, the
Dante Divine Comedy
Darwin Voyage of the Beagle, the
Darwin Origin of Species, on the
de Tocqueville Democracy in America
Defoe Robinson Crusoe
Dickens David Copperfield
Dickens Oliver Twist
Dickens Great Expectations
Dickens Tale of Two Cities, a
Dickens A Christmas Carol
Dostoyevsky Brothers Karamazov, the
Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment
Douglass LIfe of Frederick Douglass
Dumas Count of Monte Cristo
Eliot Middlemarch
Fielding Tom Jones
Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise
Franklin Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Gibbon Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Grahame Wind in the Willows, the
Grimm Fairy Tales
Hamilton, Jay, Madison Federalist Papers, the
Hardy Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Hardy Far from the Madding Crowd
Hawthorne Scarlet Letter, the
Heroditus History
Hesse Siddhartha
Hobbes Leviathan
Homer Iliad, the
Hugo Miserables, les
Ibsen A Doll’s House
Irving Sleepy Hollow
James Ambassadors, the
James Turn of the Screw, the
Joyce Dubliners
Joyce Ulysses
Kafka Metamorphosis
Kant Critique of Pure Reason
Kipling Kim
Kipling Works
Kipling Jungle Book
Lawrence Rainbow, the
Locke Treastise on Government
London Call of the Wild, the
Longfellow Song of Hiawatha, the
Machiavelli The Prince
Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Marlowe Doctor Faustus
Marx Political Economy
Maugham Of Human Bondage
Melville Mody Dick
Mill On Liberty
Milton Paradise Lost
Montgomery Anne of Green Gables
More Utopia
Newton Principia
Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil
Plato Republic, the
Potter Treasury of Beatrix Potter
Poe Works of Edgar Allan Poe
Russell Problems of Philosophy, the
Shakespeare Complete Works
Shaw Pygmalion
Shelley Frankenstein
Smith Wealth of Nations, the
Sophocles Oedipus and other plays
Stevenson Treasure Island
Stevenson Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Stoker Dracula
Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Swift Gulliver’s Travels
Swift Modest Proposal, a
Thackeray Vanity Fair
Thoreau Walden
Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War
Tolstoy Anna Karenina
Tolstoy War and Peace
Trollope Way We Live Now, the
Twain Huckleberry Finn
Twain Tom Sawyer
Verne Around the World in Eighty Days
Verne Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Virgil Aeneid
Voltaire Candide
Wells War of the Worlds, the
Wells Island of Doctor Moreau, the
Wells Time Machine
Wharton Ethan Frome
Whitman Leaves of Grass
Wilde Importance of Being Earnest
Wilde Picture of Dorian Gray, the
Wodehouse White Feather
Constitution, United States
LIfe of Olaudah Equiano
King James Bible
Beowulf
Kama Sutra

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