For those of us who are fans of Virginia Woolf, the absolute delight is knowing that her works are in public domain and many can be downloaded from the Internet for free. However, I could not find a free version of her most influential writing, "The Waves", in Microsoft Reader eBook format. I did find a HTML version of the book in University of Adelaide’s e-library, and proceeded to convert the “.html” file into Microsoft Reader eBook’s “.lit” file.

First, I copied the entire text into Microsoft Word and created a “.doc” file, then it was a one-click operation to turn it into a “.lit” file with Microsoft’s “Read” software. The process took less than 5 minutes. Why do I even bother if I can read the book on Web pages? A couple of reasons: 1) "The Waves" as a Microsoft Reader eBook is a lean and portable 290K file, down from 442K in HTML; 2) MS Reader’s capabilities to bookmark, highlight, take notes, and even doodle are unique and impressive. One drawback: in this particular test with "The Waves", certain formatting like italics and indents got lost in the process of conversion.

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