Since 1995, JSTOR (a “journal storage” site) has helped students, researchers, and teachers keep up with the latest in academic journals and articles by offering free or low-cost subscriptions to access this information from thousands of sources. However, most students lose their free access to the system after they graduate, and until now the site resources have not been fully accessible to the public. With JSTOR’s new “Register & Read” program the valuable information from hundreds years of research and writing is now available to anyone who creates a free account through the site.

The JSTOR archives are of crucial importance to anyone interested in learning more about history, because the site contains articles and publications dating back centuries. Reading what people wrote about their daily lives, thoughts, scientific advances of the day, and current culture in the 18th or 19th century gives you an incredible perspective about those eras, and a better understanding of how things have changed since then – or how little things have changed.

New ways of thinking, new discoveries, and new information are constantly being written about by talented students and researchers, but these papers and articles are hard to find outside of the library of the specific school where those students and researchers are located. JSTOR was created to make a “digital library” where these important documents could be stored and accessed. It’s a significant contribution to the global knowledge database.

One of the best ways to encourage people to read more is to provide more reading materials, and that’s what the Register & Read program does. What’s more, if you take advantage of this opportunity to access the articles on a wide range of topics, you’ll not only increase your knowledge of those subjects, but you’ll also improve your vocabulary. Anyone working on improving speed reading skills knows the importance of a good vocabulary in developing good speed reading habits.

The JSTOR Register & Read program is free, and you can sign up here. What are you waiting for? A world of reading is just a few clicks away.

For over a decade the focus at BookSlut.com has been on brilliant writing – fiction, nonfiction, poetry, essays, works of new authors you’ve never heard of and forgotten pieces from well-known authors you loved in the past. Editor Jessa Crispin, a professional writer herself, has created a site that appeals to a broad range of readers due to its engaging and eclectic selections. We asked her a few questions about the history of the website and the culture of reading.

7S: What made you decide to start the BookSlut site in 2002?

JC: Boredom. I had a lot of time on my hands at my day job and needed to do something that vaguely looked like work to fill the days. It wasn’t until later, when I was surprised to find out other people were actually reading it, too, that I realized I was going to have to take it seriously.

7S: You’ve featured interviews with well-known authors like Kage Baker, Steven Brust, and Neil Gaiman, but also conversations with writers like André Aciman and Santiago Roncagliolo, who aren’t exactly household names in the United States. How do you decide who to interview next?

JC: We leave it up to our contributors to pitch names. But we read everything from the incredibly obscure to the more well known fantasy writers, so who we profile tends to reflect who we are reading.

7S: In the current issue there are twice as many reviews of nonfiction works as of fiction. Is this because there is more nonfiction being written – at least more that is worthy of attention – or for some other reason, if any?

JC: Honestly, it’s because I find contemporary fiction to be so very underwhelming. Like I said, what we profile on the site tends to reflect our reading habits, and for the last couple years, contemporary American fiction has been uninspiring. And yet nonfiction — and by which I do not mean exclusively memoir, because we don’t read much memoir, either — has been quite good in the last years. So we regularly review more nonfiction than fiction.

7S: What’s your perspective on the relationship between reading and writing? Is a good writer always someone who is also a voracious reader?

JC: Every once and a while I’ll meet an author who claims not to read very much, and I have to say, I pretty much immediately lose all interest in reading their books. If you’re not rapturously in love with the literary world you are trying to become a member of, then why bother? Writing should never only be about personal expression. It’s about art, it’s about people in general, it’s about beauty and truth and philosophy and all that stupid stuff. One has to embrace it whole heartedly, or else your writing simply becomes an exercise in narcissistic excess.

7S: What’s the last book you read, and what’s on your upcoming “must read” list?

JC: The last book I read was a nonfiction book called “After Lives,” and it was a guide to various culture’s beliefs and myths about the afterlife. Today I started “Snow” by Orhan Pamuk on the train. It sounds trite to call a work by someone who has already won the Nobel “amazing,” but there you go, it is.