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The Jungle

Wiseone

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Ft. Campbell, KY
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I've recently been downloading free books onto my kindle and just finished reading The Jungle, and let me say if you've never heard of or read this book you're missing out. Its a fantastic story and absolutely gut wrenching in its description of a newly arrived immigrant family to America and the man who tries to keep it all together. The story is set in the first decade of the 1900s, and details how this family is churned through the American industrial machine. The words and imagery are some of the best I've read in a long time, you actually feel the hopelessness of the main character, I cannot fully describe it you simply have to read it. And what's best is, like I said, its free which means you can even start reading on online and I've provided a link to it as well.

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/u-sinclair/TheJungle.pdf
 
I've recently been downloading free books onto my kindle and just finished reading The Jungle, and let me say if you've never heard of or read this book you're missing out. Its a fantastic story and absolutely gut wrenching in its description of a newly arrived immigrant family to America and the man who tries to keep it all together. The story is set in the first decade of the 1900s, and details how this family is churned through the American industrial machine. The words and imagery are some of the best I've read in a long time, you actually feel the hopelessness of the main character, I cannot fully describe it you simply have to read it. And what's best is, like I said, its free which means you can even start reading on online and I've provided a link to it as well.

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/u-sinclair/TheJungle.pdf

I've found a couple of gems myself in the Free Kindle section. I'll take a peek tonight..... :thumbs:
 
I've found a couple of gems myself in the Free Kindle section. I'll take a peek tonight..... :thumbs:

I should have added these two exerpts

But perhaps the worst of the consequences of this long
siege was that they lost another member of their family;
Brother Jonas disappeared. One Saturday night he did
not come home, and thereafter all their efforts to get trace
of him were futile. It was said by the boss at Durham’s
that he had gotten his week’s money and left there. That
might not be true, of course, for sometimes they would
say that when a man had been killed; it was the easiest
way out of it for all concerned. When, for instance, a man
had fallen into one of the rendering tanks and had been
made into pure leaf lard and peerless fertilizer, there was
no use letting the fact out and making his family unhappy.
More probable, however, was the theory that Jonas had
deserted them, and gone on the road, seeking happiness.
He had been discontented for a long time, and not without
some cause. He paid good board, and was yet obliged
to live in a family where nobody had enough to eat. And
Marija would keep giving them all her money, and of
course he could not but feel that he was called upon to
do the same. Then there were crying brats, and all sorts
of misery; a man would have had to be a good deal of a
hero to stand it all without grumbling, and Jonas was
not in the least a hero

It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it
came into the department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the twothousand-
revolutions-a-minute flyers, and mixed with half
a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was in a ham could
make any difference. There was never the least attention
paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come
all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been
rejected, and that was moldy and white—it would be dosed
with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers,
and made over again for home consumption. There
would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the
dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and
spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There
would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the
water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands
of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these
storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand
over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the
dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the
packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they
would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into
the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke;
the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who
did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even
when he saw one—there were things that went into the
sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a
tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands
before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice
of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into
the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat,
and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends
of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into
old barrels in the cellar and left there.
 
I've recently been downloading free books onto my kindle and just finished reading The Jungle, and let me say if you've never heard of or read this book you're missing out. Its a fantastic story and absolutely gut wrenching in its description of a newly arrived immigrant family to America and the man who tries to keep it all together. The story is set in the first decade of the 1900s, and details how this family is churned through the American industrial machine. The words and imagery are some of the best I've read in a long time, you actually feel the hopelessness of the main character, I cannot fully describe it you simply have to read it. And what's best is, like I said, its free which means you can even start reading on online and I've provided a link to it as well.

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/u-sinclair/TheJungle.pdf

It was required reading for me in school.

Made an impact on my worldview, no doubt.
 
I've recently been downloading free books onto my kindle and just finished reading The Jungle, and let me say if you've never heard of or read this book you're missing out. Its a fantastic story and absolutely gut wrenching in its description of a newly arrived immigrant family to America and the man who tries to keep it all together. The story is set in the first decade of the 1900s, and details how this family is churned through the American industrial machine. The words and imagery are some of the best I've read in a long time, you actually feel the hopelessness of the main character, I cannot fully describe it you simply have to read it. And what's best is, like I said, its free which means you can even start reading on online and I've provided a link to it as well.

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/u-sinclair/TheJungle.pdf

One of the most influential books in US history...it is a good read.
 
While I'll grant that I've read a few "misery novels", it is not a genre I typically pursue. Even Hemmingway and Cormac MacCarthy with their "everyone dies at the end, alone, in the rain" stuff sound a smidge more cheerful.
 
I've recently been downloading free books onto my kindle and just finished reading The Jungle, and let me say if you've never heard of or read this book you're missing out. Its a fantastic story and absolutely gut wrenching in its description of a newly arrived immigrant family to America and the man who tries to keep it all together. The story is set in the first decade of the 1900s, and details how this family is churned through the American industrial machine. The words and imagery are some of the best I've read in a long time, you actually feel the hopelessness of the main character, I cannot fully describe it you simply have to read it. And what's best is, like I said, its free which means you can even start reading on online and I've provided a link to it as well.

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/u-sinclair/TheJungle.pdf

Great book. If you like those "imagery" types - might I suggest "Ulysses" by James Joyce. Another fantastic (albeit non-American) book that is a bit longer (fairly length) and contains even more visualization but, there's just something about it that draws you in.

While I'll grant that I've read a few "misery novels", it is not a genre I typically pursue. Even Hemmingway and Cormac MacCarthy with their "everyone dies at the end, alone, in the rain" stuff sound a smidge more cheerful.

Meh, just like life - everyone dies in the end.
 
another free book on the nook is Brams Stoker's Dracula. I think this is the best horror book I have read in years, and I read a lot of horror. It takes a little while to get used to the language, but it is very worth it. Great great book.
 
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