Shakespeare, Dickens, Twain and more coming to DS
by Justin McElroy 
{ Dec 11th 2008 at 10:15AM }
You may think you've read Last of the Mohicans and Hamlet, but you haven't read anything until you've read it with adjustable text size and virtual bookmarks. Right after the break, you can see the full list of stories that you'll be able to take off your bookshelf and burn in a giant fire or, as we now call it, a "narrative liberation."
- Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
- Jane Austen - Emma
- Jane Austen -Mansfield Park
- Jane Austen - Persuasion
- Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
- Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility
- Harriet Belcher - Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin
- R.D. Blackmore - Lorna Doone
- Anne Bronte - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
- Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
- Charlotte Bronte - The Professor
- Charlotte Bronte - Shirley
- Charlotte Bronte - Villette
- Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
- John Bunyan - The Pilgrim's Progress
- Frances Burnett - Little Lord Fauntleroy
- Frances Burnett - The Secret Garden
- Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- Lewis Carroll - Through the Looking-Glass
- Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone
- Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White
- Carlo Collodi - Adventures of Pinocchio
- Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
- Arthur Conan Doyle - The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
- Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim
- Susan Coolidge - What Katy Did
- James Fenimore Cooper - Last of the Mohicans
- Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
- Charles Dickens - Barnaby Rudge
- Charles Dickens - Bleak House
- Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
- Charles Dickens - David Copperfield
- Charles Dickens - Dombey and Son
- Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
- Charles Dickens - Hard Times
- Charles Dickens - Martin Chuzzlewit
- Charles Dickens - Nicholas Nickleby
- Charles Dickens - The Old Curiosity Shop
- Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist
- Charles Dickens - The Pickwick Papers
- Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities
- Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
- Alexandre Dumas - The Three Musketeers
- George Eliot - Adam Bede
- George Eliot - Middlemarch
- George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss
- Henry Rider Haggard - King Solomon's Mines
- Thomas Hardy - Far From The Madding Crowd
- Thomas Hardy - The Mayor of Casterbridge
- Thomas Hardy - Tess of The D'Urbervilles
- Thomas Hardy - Under the Greenwood Tree
- Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter
- Victor Hugo - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
- Victor Hugo - Les Miserables
- Washington Irving - The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon
- Charles Kingsley - Westward Ho!
- D.H. Lawrence - Sons And Lovers
- Gaston Leroux - The Phantom of the Opera
- Jack London - The Call of the Wild
- Jack London - White Fang
- Herman Melville - Moby Dick
- Edgar Allen Poe - Tales of Mystery and Imagination
- Sir Walter Scott - Ivanhoe
- Sir Walter Scott - Rob Roy
- Sir Walter Scott - Waverley
- Anna Sewell - Black Beauty
- William Shakespeare - All's Well That Ends Well
- William Shakespeare - Antony and Cleopatra
- William Shakespeare - As You Like It
- William Shakespeare - The Comedy of Errors
- William Shakespeare - Hamlet
- William Shakespeare - Julius Caesar
- William Shakespeare - King Henry the Fifth
- William Shakespeare - King Lear
- William Shakespeare - King Richard the Third
- William Shakespeare - Love's Labour's Lost
- William Shakespeare - Macbeth
- William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice
- William Shakespeare - A Midsummer-Night's Dream
- William Shakespeare - Much Ado About Nothing
- William Shakespeare - Othello, the Moor of Venice
- William Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet
- William Shakespeare - The Taming of the Shrew
- William Shakespeare - The Tempest
- William Shakespeare - Timon of Athens
- William Shakespeare - Titus Andronicus
- William Shakespeare - Twelfth Night
- William Shakespeare - The Winter's Tale
- Robert Louis Stevenson - Kidnapped
- Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- Robert Louis Stevenson - Treasure Island
- Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
- William Thackeray - Vanity Fair
- Anthony Trollope - Barchester Towers
- Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Mark Twain - Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- Jules Verne - Round the World in Eighty Days
- Jules Verne - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
- Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest
- Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ben @ Dec 11th 2008 10:24AM
It's a nice list, but I couldn't think of anything more horrible than trying to read a whole novel on the DS Lite screens.
Might be nice a supplement for English Lit students if it has some decent search features though.
Mike @ Dec 11th 2008 10:24AM
Mmm nothing could beat reading entire books on a tiny, glowing, split-screen...
mr mobius @ Dec 11th 2008 2:04PM
If the top screen had Mario and Peach acting out Macbeth while I read it, then I would get this. Otherwise I have a laptop for this, can buy the books or can buy a portable e-reader to show these.
hydralisk456 @ Dec 11th 2008 10:24AM
What I wouldn't give for there to be some Lovecraft on that list.
deaftly @ Dec 11th 2008 10:26AM
I remember taking out David Copperfield when I was a kid only sorely to be disappointed it wasn't about magic tricks.
baby sea tuna @ Dec 11th 2008 10:27AM
I would like to keep both my vision and my patience, thank you. Good idea though, I suppose.
chispito @ Dec 11th 2008 1:56PM
I don't actually think it would be any harder on your eyes than playing games for that long on the DS. Granted, that's a long time to be playing games.
baby sea tuna @ Dec 11th 2008 2:00PM
You overestimate how long/often I play my DS, then.
GiggMan @ Dec 11th 2008 10:31AM
....He said Dickens....eehhh eehhh eehhh eh.
Rein @ Dec 11th 2008 10:35AM
I wonder how the 1400 pages of The Count of Monte Cristo is going to translate to the DS' tiny screens. You'll be scrolling until the end of time. D:
Also, only two Mark Twain books? What about No. 44 or the Mysterious Stranger?
Top Cat @ Dec 11th 2008 10:41AM
Dickens on a DS screen? It's going to take a lot of recharging to get through Bleak House!
The Dark Lord Meowcifer @ Dec 11th 2008 10:45AM
Any word on a release date? I remember seeing something about it on DS Fanboy not too long ago, but I haven't seen a release date at all yet.
mr nimblewick @ Dec 11th 2008 10:46AM
... be.
Glad I could help.
Mikey @ Dec 11th 2008 10:47AM
Show's over, Shakespere
cineva @ Dec 11th 2008 10:47AM
I don't know why but I was expecting The Divine Comedy:P
GUNT @ Dec 11th 2008 10:48AM
[Editor: Banned for violating the "this news is so old" rule]
mr nimblewick @ Dec 11th 2008 10:56AM
Well, the answer is simple. Let's destroy the other sites. I need NAMES, GUNT!
Vidikron @ Dec 11th 2008 11:01AM
Like, we DO NOT care.
GUNT, you suck.
Justin McElroy @ Dec 11th 2008 11:05AM
Anyone want to see a magic trick?
Mogster @ Dec 11th 2008 11:26AM
Hahaha Justin I love you.
GUNT2 @ Dec 11th 2008 12:09PM
Jesus Christ, I was being sarcastic. But ban away.
Deeznuts420 @ Dec 11th 2008 12:15PM
this news is cold.
ha tricked you justin.
John Z @ Dec 11th 2008 10:58AM
Priced reasonably, this might not be a bad idea. Particularly if, with the HarperCollins connection, books that aren't public domain get released as well.
The hitch in that is in the royalties and rights, to say nothing of piracy (and as I've been trying to get a couple of novels published, this is gonna get technical quick-- apologies in advance). Literary contracts are complex enough already, with many rights at stake: first publication, hardcover/paperback, international publication, audiobook rights, movie rights, etc. In many cases, a literary agent will negotiate a contract for only a very specific subset of these rights, with the rest remaining in the hands of the author. Now, of late, electronic distribution rights such as for the Kindle or the Sony Reader are being included in that initial package, so that the original publisher can lump as many revenue sources into one outgoing payment to the author. (It's interesting to note that electronic rights suddenly became majorly important around this time last year, when they were the focus of... you guessed it, the TV writers' strike!) However, for older books (or books whose authors are dead but the book isn't yet in the public domain), negotiating to get the book on the Kindle or this type of collection/service is going to be murderously difficult.
Take as an example the difference between, say, Ender's Game and All The President's Men (hypothetically speaking here-- I don't know either Orson Scott Card or Bernstein and Woodward). Assuming that both books still have elect. rights in the hands of their authors, HarperCollins (who I KNOW don't publish either of their work, but let's just go with it for now) would have to go back to them for these rights. Let's say OSC says "OK, go for it"; Bernstein/Woodward could still say "no". A publisher being on board doesn't guarantee that all their books, or even all of any imprint of theirs, is eligible for release.
(In another interesting irony about this, Tor books-- who DO publish OSC's work-- were forced to pull their electronic publishing arm a couple years ago by their parent company due to concerns over a lack of DRM. They've since rescinded that order.)
tl;dr I like the idea, though I'm very, VERY skeptical that it'll take off for reasons completely unrelated to the difficulty of reading long books on a DS screen.
Jody Anthony (gamertag and psn: JodyAnthony) @ Dec 11th 2008 11:18AM
no H G Wells? No sale.
flanked @ Dec 11th 2008 11:40AM
What will the pre-order bonus gift at GameStop be for this? A digital book mark? A quill pen shaped DS stylus? A DS cart full of CliffsNotes?
Killimus @ Dec 11th 2008 12:25PM
As a college English student, I'm intrigued by this. It could be really help, or almost useless.
Considering in my upcoming class I'm going to be studying 5 or 6 of those stories/plays, I might give it a look. Depends on the pricing though, I might just DL it (I know, I'm bad) if its more expensive than just getting a paperback copy.
chispito @ Dec 11th 2008 2:05PM
Why download a copyrighted reader with public domain books on it when you can just download a homebrew reader and the associated public domain works?
Killimus @ Dec 11th 2008 8:20PM
No idea they even had those on DS homebrew. Any recommended apps?
chispito @ Dec 11th 2008 2:08PM
There's no copyright left on those books. It's just a reader program with a bunch of public domain literature you can download for yourself for free.
dammskog @ Dec 12th 2008 6:34PM
start here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
343 Guilty Fart @ Dec 11th 2008 2:28PM
Wuthering Heights?? Oh FUCK yes!!!
HappyFunBall @ Dec 11th 2008 4:29PM
I kinda like the idea. It would be great for traveling, I've always wanted to read quite a few of those books.
Hope it's user-friendly, though.
Matthew Moore @ Dec 11th 2008 10:53PM
Good list but they need more.
The Old man and the Sea
Lord of the Rings
Lord of the Flies
The Jungle
Connecticut Yankee in King Authors Court
The Inferno
The Odyssey
The Illiad
And thats basically all you need to fillout the books I read in High School