The most commonly occurring letter in English is the letter e, followed I think by a and t or possibly t then a. Writing anything major, i.e. a novel of some 50,000 words without using the letter e is I imagine an arduous (see below!) but not impossible task as the author, one Ernest Vincent Wright has demonstrated.
Strictly you’d describe this as an exercise in lipogramy. According to Wikipedia Every word in Gadsby was properly spelled and all narration was grammatically correct. However, the stress of writing such a novel was apparently too much for Wright, who died at the age of 66 on the day Gadsby was published.
Popularity: 6% [?]
This is probably one of the oldest as it originated back in my 2nd year at school in 1971. Michael Hart was given a lot of free (and very expensive back then) computer time and decided to try and store everything that could be stored electronically (and out of copyright).
So the concept pre-dates the web by 20 years and was there almost from the inception of the internet. Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books. Of course the book have to be proof read so that is why there are currently 20,000 titles available for download and 100,000 titles amongst all the partners of Project Gutenberg. If this is your kind of thing they are always looking for volunteers.
The website is of course a more recent addition to the project and is a Wiki.
Interesting the five most popular authors over the last 30 days.
- Twain, Mark (56676)
- Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir (25434)
- Ralph, Lester (24461)
- Shakespeare, William (24378)
- Dickens, Charles (23915)
Popularity: 6% [?]
Enid Blyton was a very popular author whose work attracted a bit of controversy in the 50s and 60s but despite that she is ranked as the 5th most prolific author worldwide- she wrote over 800 books at an average daily speed of 10,000 words. Her work has many fans today and of course she created Noddy who continues to this day. As a kid I read many of her books but I was still astonished to find out just how many she had written.
I wonder if some of the appeal is because her works harken back to the 50s which is perceived as better in some ways than now. Plus her books always had a moral background- the heroes and heroines did the right thing and baddies got their comeuppance.
This website sells her books but is more than that- it’s a kind of tribute by Keith Robinson (the owner) and several others around the world- see the About page. It’s nicely designed and any Enid Blyton fan will find lots here, including some fanfic.
Popularity: 6% [?]
30 Years ago, a Golden Record was created and put on The Voyager 1 and 2 Probes. These are now a very long way away from Earth- a shade under 10 billion miles which is a pretty long way.
The Voyager Golden Record is a phonograph record that contains sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. It is intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or far future humans, that may find it.
On this website you can hear the music and view the 116 images. It’s not a very welcoming website but the content makes it of interest. You can find out more background information from Wikipedia.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Kunst-Formen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature), by Ernst Haeckel, 1898 is now in the public domain (probably has been for a long time) .
This is a wonderful book, which features all sorts of illustrations of the natural world. If you’re doing some research for organic shapes, this book is a nice place to start. There are 397 pages in total, or if you like very big PDF files you can download it from Eric Gjerde’s website. He posted this on Flickr.com, the photo sharing site.
Popularity: 4% [?]
If you like writing but don’t want to spend years writing novels etc, why not have a go at ficlets? A ficlet is a very short story, between 64 and 1024 characters long. It’s collaborative in that anyone else can add a prequel or sequel so you’ll probably never know where it starts or ends.
It’s an interesting idea and very popular judging by the number of stories which if the numbering is anything to go by is several thousands!
Popularity: 3% [?]