Go to amazon.com, Books section, advanced search, sort by price low to high, start downloading free books!
Or just click on this link.
http://www.amazon.com/Totally-Free-kindle-Books/lm/R27UG52OAM3TFX
Then head on over to the Baen free library and download each free book.
http://www.baen.com/library/books.asp
Finally, if you must, start buying the 99 cent books by the desperate self-published authors that have good ratings. Hard to regret later even if you choose badly.
If you want to burn your entire $5.99 tax refund, Wool seems pretty popular book on kindle. 4400 good reviews
http://www.amazon.com/Wool-Omnibus-Edition-Silo-ebook/dp/B0071XO8RA/ref=kinw_dp_ke
Also, be sure to take advantage of the free samples before you buy a book!
The preview is priceless as far as telling if you will enjoy the writing style. It will typically give you the first 10 pages of the book or more.
Ooh, thank you!
I'd have to see what differences there are between amazon.ca and amazon.com, though. It's like when I do my monthly Early Reviewers requests on Library Thing... some titles just are not available to Canadians.
cheap 2nd hand books > Kindle
I've been buying cheap second-hand books for decades. Unfortunately, they're not that cheap anymore, and there are a lot fewer second-hand bookstores around these days. I've been mostly lucky with amazon.ca and eBay, but sometimes get burned (or at least the sellers try). Just the other day I received a Carl Sagan book that had been advertised as "Very Good Condition" - and it's got fundamentalist scribblings in atrocious handwriting all the way through! Some idiot decided to have an argument with Carl Sagan - a very DEAD Carl Sagan (the book was published posthumously) - in
ink...
Naturally, that book is going back for a refund.
Another reason: I recently moved. It took OVER SIX DOZEN banker's boxes to pack my books - and that's not anywhere close to the entirety of all the books I own. I've got a few more dozens' worth of boxes of them in storage. Mind you, some of those are inherited from my grandmother and dad; I won't be keeping 99.9% of them, since they're murder mysteries and westerns.
For those older books and short stories you are having trouble locating, I think you may have to search online or get advice on where to look for them.
Some of these may be available, but the finding of them could be a bit of work.
I've been hunting some books for over 30 years, so what's another few months or a couple of years?
You made a smart move. I'm not a "gadget guy" really. My computer is a gaming desktop and my phone is not very smart, but the old style e-ink Kindle is one of my favorite inanimate objects.
It's like a low-tech high-tech device, and that's where it gets its charm. It's not hooked up to my social media RSS twitfeed blah blah blah *shakes fist.* I just put e-books on it and read, just like a normal book. Imagine that, technology that isn't unbelievably irritating.
My philosophy of "gadgets" is that it's got to last a good long while and can't be something that I can't figure out fairly easily if I happen to lose the instructions. That's what I tell the guys at the electronics/computer department wherever I might be thinking of making a purchase - don't expect to see me back every 2 weeks for the latest gizmo that goes with/replaces this thing (whatever we're talking about at the time) since I expect things to last awhile - at least until the warranty runs out!
Also, you are now free to read books with embarrassing covers!
Harry Potter, My Pet Goat, Anita Blake, Mein Kampf, whatever
No one will have any idea what you are reading.
Heh, I got used to hiding some of my reading a long time ago.
True story: My grandmother approved of Tarzan books, so when she saw
Nomads of Gor, she bought it for me. She had no idea what the difference was between John Norman and Edgar Rice Burroughs; she just went by the cover illustrations (the editions I had of Tarzan were very similar to the early American editions of the Norman novels). So when my grandfather got hold of it and read it, he was horrified that his
teenage granddaughter had such a book!
Well, I hadn't even read the thing at the time, but when I finally did, my grandmother didn't want me to read it on the front porch - she was hysterical about "What would the NEIGHBORS think???!"
Wait, obscure books? Good thing you got Kindle! That's where all the self publishers are. Hmmm
My favorite historical fiction is an old book about Marco Polo.
The Journeyer by Gary Jennings. Very fat book! Almost $9 on kindle.
http://www.amazon.com/Journeyer-Gary-Jennings/dp/0765323494
That takes a long time to read. Also, a lot of weird sexual practices 700-800 years ago, so certainly an adult book.
Marco Polo is interesting, certainly.
Let's see, sci fi...
You could always buy a tome that you were always reluctant to buy because it wouldn't fit on a bookshelf, like Pandora's Star. But you want niche/rare right?
The Forever War is $5 on kindle and like >$10 at the bookstore because they won't make it in regular paperback form. I bought another book by the author instead, Forever Peace, and hated it.
That's by Joe Haldeman, right? I've already got it in paperback. I hadn't heard of Forever Peace, though.
Can't really say I loved any sci-fi book except maybe Foreigner. The series is up to book 14 now. Only the first 3 really matter though. Aliens loosely based off of feudal Japan. The author seems to have a thing for damaged male lead characters.
http://www.amazon.com/Foreigner-Ann...UTF8&qid=1366164738&sr=1-1&keywords=foreigner
I haven't read those - I'm more into the Union-Alliance novels, and I absolutely
loved the sequel to Cyteen (Regenesis).
OMG you SIT ON YOUR COUCH & BROWSE TEH INTERWEBS! Have you not realized that you don't need a computer anymore to surf the net? It's literally couch potato heaven. If you're only using it to read books, you have not tapped 90% of the potential, seriously.
Anything you used to do at your computer, you can now do almost anywhere. It's a brave new world.
Unfortunately, I cannot sit on my couch and browse anything - I don't own a couch! Seriously, I gave up having a couch in favor of more bookshelves.
I do not type with my thumbs.
Ever.
I will be dead and in the ground before I do.
EDIT: Okay, exaggeration, and I know touch screen devices are better than old fashioned thumb typing
EDIT2: What can I say? I never fell out of love with the desktop. It's grand and powerful when you're at it, and it is completely absent when you aren't at it. Bliss.
I don't type with my thumbs either, unless you count using the space bar.
This was the main reason why I got a Kindle last year -- 30+ years of reading and hoarding books was beginning to cause problems with lack of shelf and storage space. Now, almost all of my new purchases are ebooks. I'm still going to hoard them, apparently, but at least they're not taking up physical space in my house.
Have you ever had them vanish (like the infamous incident when Amazon took back a book that people had purchased, whether the customer wanted it gone or not)? I must admit, it makes me nervous to think that my only copy of something could vanish or be inaccessible if the battery goes dead/electricity goes off.
Someone has already recommended Wool so I can just second that, it's rad. The other big recommendation I'll make is to take a look at Project Gutenberg. Thousands upon thousands of free ebook versions of public-domain works; convenient as hell if you're into classics.
Ah, I'd forgotten about Project Gutenberg!
I remember a few years back, when I was hunting for an unabridged edition of The Count of Monte Cristo... the only one available was in French! I do read French, but not well enough to get all the nuances that a more fluent reader would catch. I was fortunate that one of the local second-hand booksellers managed to find me a copy.
History_Buff said:
Ever read Brendan Dubois's Resurrection Day? It's a surprisingly good alt-history/sci-fi sort of thing where things get kind of nuclear-firey during the Cuban missile crisis. Book takes place some decades after that as America is stuck trying to rebuild itself under a military government, Kennedy and the rest of the civilian government having died when the bombs fell. NY and DC are still empty irradiated wastelands, and the story is a journalist uncovering mysterious goings on. Really, really good book IMO.
I used to read a lot of post-apocalyptic stuff, but had to cut way back - it was seriously depressing. I'm currently watching Revolution on TV - one of the most ridiculous SF-wannabe series I've ever seen, about what happens 15 years after the electricity suddenly doesn't work anymore (there's a thread about it in the Arts & Entertainment forum). But if this is decently literate - in that the author doesn't assume the audience doesn't know its science or have some sensible ideas of what a post-apocalyptic society would be like, I'll give it a try.
