I have to read some book of literary merit before Monday. Unfortunately, I don’t have any around my house that I haven’t read, and I have a late fee at the library, and don’t get paid until Monday. Are there any online (legit) sources where I can read books?
Yup , if you like Science Fiction
Their ebooks have an RTF format , plus several others thats platform independent
and then the classics
project gutenburg
They have a number of books that date right up to the 20’s , so you should be able to find something that would suit your needs
Declan
Project Gutenberg is fairly decent. Any search on google should bring up a site but its only going to be books with expired copyright/express permission so you’ll have a limited selection.
Getting books that you’d normally pay for is bad… but who am I to say? PM me and I can help you out.
Well, you don’t seem to be very choosy about what you read, so why not take a good play?
This site offers Shakespeare’s complete works online (legally, since the Swan of Avon has been dead for a while). If you want it confused, take Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne.
Generally, just google for the title of the book you’re looking for. If it’s a true classic with expired copyright, chances are good to find it. I wouldn’t call this the ideal approach to literature, though.
Wow. That’s a cool site. Now, can you recommend some I could find there? I was looking for a certain Vonnegut book, but couldn’t find any on the Gutenberg site.
You’re really mostly going to be able to (legally) find books that are in the public domain. Classics mostly, that sort of thing. Vonnegut stuff is still in print and the publishers want their money.
Bartleby.com also has a decent collection.
A Yahoo! search on online ebooks turns up a host of sites, some of which are very good. Bear in mind that Acrobat documents can be viewed as webpages, so you don’t have to download them and open them externally (if this is an issue).
Be a little wary searching for “free ebooks” - I did this when I first got my PDA, and it was a nightmare trawling through the many ad-sites that use these terms as a hook - even in their domain name - but have absolutely nothing to offer.
Some that are quite good include:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/ebooklist.html
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/aut/
http://www.blackmask.com
http://www.memoware.com/
If you mean by giving me money to purchase those books, sign me up 
For all kinds of science topics, try the reading room at National Academy Press
Litrix reading room has lots of public domain literature (including one of my favorites, Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds
What a shocking bad hat!
If the document can be seen on your screen it was downloaded to your computer. No way around that. If you can see a PDF document on your screen, you have Adobe Reader (or Acrobat or other reader) installed. No way around that because AFAIK the browser cannot display a PDF except using the Acrobat program as a plugin. Given the preceding I find it is a better idea to download the document to the desktop and open it using solely the Acrobat program. This way you get rid of the browser taking up screen space, memory space etc. You have the document on the desktop if you want to save it and keep it for another time. Etc.
www.blackmask.com , I think.