Free books and free books
Our regional library is constantly discarding books. The librarian takes the discarded books and shelves them for anyone to come and take. I check the stacks once or twice a week, and if she sees me, the librarian will tell me what books she's going through and discarding at the moment, like adult biographies, juvenile histories, juvenile or adult fiction, etc. Rarely do I not find at least ONE book to take home. Far too often I find an armload or two, and at times I've been known to fill my car's trunk with discarded books.
My one grief in the midst of all this biblio-largesse is that I cannot take all the discarded books. I try to find homes for them - even email other readers and homeschooling families and ask if they would like me to ship them a box or two of books. Back in the spring I shipped off several large boxes of juvenile biographies all over the country to various families. I fervently wish I had more reading friends living nearby who could help me save the books from their eventual demise in a landfill.
Since the arrival of my Kindle I have found another pleasant source of free books: the Amazon Kindle Store. Now I can pleasantly squander too much time by looking up in the Kindle Store authors of the discarded books I pick up from the library. This week from the library I brought home two books by E.F. Benson: Trouble for Lucia and Lucia's Progress. And in the Kindle Store I got (for free) Miss Mapp, Daisy's Aunt, and Queen Lucia. I found All the Books of My Life by Sheila Kaye-Smith at the library, and at Amazon I found Kaye-Smith's novel, Joanna Godden. The last discarded book I picked out was Dog Days: Other Times, Other Dogs; the Autobiography of a Man and His Dog Friends through Four Decades of Changing America by Stewart Edward White. I looked him up in the Kindle Store and hit pay dirt! White was a prolific author of travel and adventure books. (He also dabbled in some paranormal stuff, but I avoided those books.) The Forest, Arizona Nights, and Camp and Trail looked interesting enough to download.
If you have any free e-book recommendations, I'd love to know about them.
posted by Laura at
2:48 PM
3 Comments:
The works of one of my favorite authors, Willa Cather, are also free, along with Jane Austin's novels. Lots and lots and lots of good stuff on there. :-)
Authors that I've downloaded for free on my Kindle are Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Maurice Leblanc, John Bunyan, John Muir, Baroness Orczy, Charlotte Bronte and J.C. Lincoln. Do you subcribe to the Amazon free books letter? They list newer books that are free (unfortunately, mostly smut) but I've downloaded some Christian/inspirational titles here: http://www.ereaderiq.com/
I was thinking that I would love to read about free ebooks from someone whose taste in books is at least in the suburbs of mine.
As Hope illustrated in the comment above, there are bad books in abundance.
Thank you for the books you've mailed me, including the most recent one. I have enjoyed them.
In the past I've bought duplicates of good books I own at books sales because it is a good deal and they are worth reading. Some I've given away on the blog. But at times it is hard to find a good home for a good book.
Which makes friends like you precious.
I'm praying for that little grandbaby of yours about to come!
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home