Truly professional people have always been distinguished by their love of literature. Even Joseph Stalin, despite his high position, read at least 300 pages a day. It was the greatest honor to receive the Stalin Prize for Literature in the USSR, because the leader himself personally read all the books.

IN Lately more and more often they talk about the decline of book culture - Russia has long lost the title of the most reading country in the world. These assumptions are based on data from the book trade, which is indeed in a sad state. However, no conclusions can be drawn from this. People didn't stop reading - they just switched to another medium.

Electronic books, readers, as they were called, allow you to take with you not one book, but a whole library, which is very important if, for example, you want to read The Forsyte Saga and then immediately The Dark Tower. Naturally, there are no problems with storage. Yes, and with accessibility - you can get the book of interest immediately, and not go to the bookstore, in which it may well not be. But in order not to rush all over the Internet, it is useful to know the places where this particular old edition of a very rare book can be found.

and Flibusta (www.flibusta.net). Libraries are similar both in content (there are a lot of different books) and in design. On the page of each book there is an abstract, ratings and reviews from readers. Perhaps the only significant difference is that downloading some books on Librusek is paid. However, online reading is always available - on both sites.

Now let's move on to libraries with specialization.

The previous sites contain a huge number of books, but with rare exceptions, these are books from the 18th-21st centuries. If you need the text of "Daniel the Sharpener's Prayer", then the Im warden website (www.imwerden.de) will come to the rescue. In addition to ancient Russian literature and literature of the 18th - 20th centuries, the works of some foreign authors are presented.

For fans of science fiction, the site www.fantasykniga.com will be very useful. It's relative new library. A user-friendly interface, the possibility of free download, an active increase in the number of books, beautiful design, finally, can make the library popular in the near future.

Library Gumer

It should be noted the Gumer library (), which contains a selection of scientific papers in the humanities. Here you can find books on philology, Orthodoxy, jurisprudence, philosophy, foreign languages, incl. "exotic" - Japanese or Turkish. This is the most popular scientific portal where you can find what you can not find on other sites.

magazines.russ.ru) - the most convenient and complete collection periodicals. Files from the beginning of the nineties are presented. Here you can find magazines: Arion, Zvezda, Foreign Literature, Continent, New world etc. That is, "thick" literary magazines are presented.

The library "www.sci-lib.com" offers a selection of already scientific books and magazines. Represented fields of knowledge: various natural sciences (archeology, astronomy, paleontology, physics, etc.), mathematics, technology, humanities (history, psychology, sociology), society. There is a selection of encyclopedic publications. So, here you can find all the volumes of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia or the Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron.

The Runivers portal (www.runivers.ru) offers to learn more about the history of Russia. The material is divided into sections: atlases, military history, general history, regimental history, etc. There is a collection of historical documents.

Naturally, the number of Runet libraries is huge, but we have tried to draw your attention to the most famous and interesting projects.

At the end of 2016 significantly limited access to free fiction and specialized literature. Sites are either blocked by government agencies or monetize downloads out of good will.

Exploring the 30 Most Popular Resources offering free download books, gave the following results. Sites use only rare and unpopular works as free literature.

All modern books, as well as the creations of the classics, strictly limited access. You will see information about this either immediately or by downloading the file and reading part of the book (the so-called "introductory fragment"). The price that must be paid for downloading literature will also be indicated there. This rule applies to such popular sites as LitMir, Librusek, Aldebaran, Vceknigi, Bookz, OwnLib, LibOk, Big free library and others.

In this article, selected digital libraries with a large database you can actually download all the books for free. Supported formats for most works are .fb2, .pdf, .txt.

Attention : Before you open links to sites, read the descriptions. 3 of the 4 sites listed are blocked by Roskomnadzor and will open only with the help of simple manipulations.

1. Flibusta

A book fraternity operating from the deep end of the internet. About how, we wrote a little earlier. The largest electronic library with free access. Replenished by the users themselves. At the end of 2016 can boast 354,000 books. More than 2,000 books are updated monthly.

2. Large electronic library

Free download. 60,000 books. Enough a large number of categories, but the interface is not very user-friendly. If you know what you're looking for, you'll love the site. Fast page loading speed and downloading books in 1 click.

3. Verbal Bogatyr

This library e-books is also located in the Internet zone, hidden from search robots. Therefore, it should be opened through TOR browser. detailed instructions to enter is placed on the link in the first paragraph of the rating. The owners of the resource do not report the number of submitted books, but test requests demonstrate a large database. The site's interface is extremely user-friendly and reduces the time required to search for and download a book to a few seconds.

If you want to continue using the services free digital libraries, we recommend that you master the shadow part of the World Wide Web (deep web), as well as stock up on useful links to access sites of interest. Or download books by your favorite authors and allocate a few GB of disk space for them.