The first covers Revolver, arguably The Beatles best album. Not quite as extreme as Sgt Pepper Revolver has steadily increased in class for years. Rolling Stone rates the best three albums ever recorded as follows:

1. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles
2. Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys
3. Revolver, The Beatles

For me Revolver would be number one and Sgt Pepper one below it.

The album, which was released in August 1966, made it thrillingly clear that what we now think of as “the Sixties” was fully — and irreversibly — under way.

Part of that revolutionary impulse was visual. Klaus Voormann, one of the Beatles’ artist buddies from their days in Hamburg, Germany, designed a striking photo-collage cover for Revolver; it was a crucial step on the road to the even trippier, more colorful imagery of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which would come less than a year later.

And then there’s the music. The most innovative track on the album is John Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Attempting to distill an LSD trip into a three-minute song, Lennon borrowed lyrics from Timothy Leary’s version of The Tibetan Book of the Dead and recorded his vocal to sound like “the Dalai Lama singing from the highest mountaintop.” Tape loops, a backward guitar part (Paul McCartney’s blistering solo on “Taxman,” in fact) and a droning tamboura completed the experimental effect, and the song proved hugely influential. For his part, on “Eleanor Rigby” and “For No One,” McCartney mastered a strikingly mature form of art song, and Harrison, with “Taxman,” “I Want to Tell You” and “Love You To,” challenged Lennon-McCartney’s songwriting dominance.

Revolver, finally, signaled that in popular music, anything — any theme, any musical idea — could now be realized. And, in the case of the Beatles, would be. - Rolling Stone

The ebook is from Revolver Book, it’s called Abracadabra. If you like the album it’s a must click. Via BoingBoing.

The second ebook is the latest version of Lounge’s The Free iPod Book:

The Editors of iLounge are proud to announce the immediate availability of The Free iPod Book 2.2 for download. This edition is an expanded, improved follow-up to The Free iPod Book 2.0, which was recommended by The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg as the “free manual on getting the most from your iPod.” With four all-new sections and updates to many of the book’s previously-released sections, the 200-plus-page Free iPod Book 2.2 is a must-see for current and prospective iPod owners.

If you own or are considering buying an iPod - and who hasn’t at some point - then you should download this massive tome. Some serious work has gone into this ebook and it’s worth going though.

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