E-book Catch All!
So, I've been gathering that a lot of us have been getting e-book readers of some flavor for Christmas. I also gather that a lot of us have them already.
So, in the interest of feeding my literary cravings on minimal monies(none is ideal), I propose that anyone who's acquainted with the methods behind finding free, quality books post em up here. If you're aware of books that are not free, but astoundingly good and obtainable for less in the electronic medium, let us know about those too.
But really, this thread is because I need more books on my Kindle, and I think other people do too.
So, with that said, here's some stuff I've run across. Be advised, the listing will be heavily Amazon-centric:
Already Dead by Charlie Huston - Vampires vs Zombies. Havent' read, but what's not to like?
Star Wars: Lost tribe of Sith - It's a parted out series, but free and good.
Vanish by Tom Pawlik - Free thriller. No idea of quality, but interesting premise.
Classics - Art of War, Anna Karenina, The Prince, Island of Doctor Moreau. I love classic Lit, so getting it in an easily readable carryalong format is sweeeet 
Coldstream wrote:
Sands, S. & Murdoch, J.; New England Journal of Medicine. Why Guys Dig Chicks Who Violently Kill Stuff Nov, 2008; pp 65-68.
If you like Sci-Fi, check out the Baen Free Library
I've read almost every book on the Baen Free Library
I asked my wife the same thing last night. She replied with "stop being a moron and wash the damned dishes" -- Paleocon asking his wife about zombies
Any in particular that you recommend?
Coldstream wrote:
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From the Baen Library, I recommend all of the ones by John Ringo
with the exception of the Bolo book.
And if you happen to like David Weber / John Ringo's works you can find them collected online
at the Fifth Imperium.
The Authors give out copies of the ebooks for free. If you like them, buy a hard copy, or an e-copy from Baen.
Most, if not all, books/short stories by Cory Doctorow are available online for free in one digital format or another as he's a huge supporter of the Creative Commons license.
I would recommend his "Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom" for his take on a Transhuman, reputation based economy, world.
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For stuff like that, it'd most likely be an e-copy.
Cool deal, I'll have to dig around for some of those.
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It's pretty well known, but Project Gutenberg always deserves a mention. Almost every classic you can think of for free, essentially most anything out of copyright. I've been reading through Pride and Prejudice recently with my DS browser, AKA the poor man's ebook.
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Aristophan wrote:
Aye, awesome listing. I've picked up a handful of classics via Amazon so far, and love that they're out there.
Coldstream wrote:
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Good call on the free classics. If you go to the Kindle storefront and then Kindle Top Sellers, you can easily find popular free titles. An easy way to pick them out quickly is they usually have no cover picture. I picked up Frankenstein and The Invisible Man yesterday.
There's also a great collection series that can be purchased super-cheap. It's called the Mobile Reference Library. They generally offer an author's full library for under $4. Of important note is that the formatting, navigation and search features are aces. I've picked up a couple free titles from other random sellers that had awful formatting, making them virtually unreadable, leading to immediate deletions. Mobile Reference does a good job for the price.
I picked up the complete/virtually complete libraries of Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Turgenev for roughly $20 total.
.............
Unrelated sie note, why didn't anyone tell me that Kindle let you surf the entire web from anywhere with no monthly subscription? I knew they offered access to Wikipedia, but I had no idea I could read any website I wanted without needing to be in a wireless zone or worrying about paying subscription fees.
Tres cool!
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Mostly because the browser is kind of slow, but hey, whatever works.
Republicans being against sex is not good. Sex is popular. -- GOP political strategist Alex Castellanos
http://www.feedbooks.com/ and http://www.mobileread.com/.
Feedbooks has plenty of books that have been converted to Kindle friendly formats, and the Mobileread forums are full of people who offer conversions of their favorite books. The offerins on Feedbooks are a tad more polished looking/feeling and are easier to browse, but there's a wealth of content at Mobileread.
If you have Calibre installed on your Kindle 2, then the entire world of Google ePub books opens up for you.
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I just want to compliment Amazon's amazing customer service on the Kindle. I got my Kindle 2 at launch, after having a Kindle 1 that now belongs to my grandmother, and about a month after getting it, it froze. I couldn't reset it, or do anything with the unit. A quick call to support and I had a new one on the way.
Well, last night, the same thing happened. I called support again, figuring I might be SOL because I'd already gotten one replacement. Nope, I have another one on the way, via overnight shipping no less, as I type this. I'll have it tomorrow. I was on hold for less than thirty seconds, and the call with the tech lasted no longer than ten minutes. He even apologized that he couldn't ship it to my office instead of my parents' house, which is my default Amazon address.
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This is not a thriller, it's evangelical Christianity in a thriller's jacket. This book taught me to check the tags for the free books from Amazon.
ManyBooks has a lot of those already converted to Kindle (and other) formats.
Similar experience here. Say what you want about the Kindle's DRM, and whether or not the Barnes & Noble nook may eventually be a better machine, but Amazon's got me locked for a long time just due to the service I've received from them.
I ran into a similar problem with a free series that I downloaded a week or two ago, the Navy Justice series by Don Brown I think it was. Just a tad too preachy for my tastes. I read through the first one and a half out of four books before giving up.
I usually think, 'This is for the rhubarb,' as I pull the trigger. -- Reaper81
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Awesome thread, I was just thinking of starting one like this!
My two biggest mentions for free books were going to be Cory Doctorow stuff, and the Baen Free Library. Specifically, John Ringo, as mentioned above. Check out either There Will Be Dragons for the first book in a series that's a very cool mix of sci-fi and fantasy, or A Hymn Before Battle for near-future military sci-fi. There are multiple books in both series for free (and more besides, but those are what I've read).
I also found a free collection of around 63 of HP Lovecraft's stories. Amazon has several Kindle collections of his stories for $.99.
Totally not free, but the book I'm reading right now is Daemon, and it's very good.
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Vampire politics. The zombies play almost no part in it, could almost be dropped from the book. Not the worst I've read, might see if the local library has the next book in the series.
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Eh, I dunno. I'm only about a third of the way through it, but so far it's so anti I'm about ready to put it down.
I dunno about this either; I've read it at this point, and while there's a bit of politics in it, it's mostly just a crappy zombies vs vampires novel with a dose of betrayal for good measure. I can definitely see why it's free though; I find it very hard to believe anyone would pay for this.
edit - Vanish update. Pulled through the rest of it this evening; I can see the evangelical Christianity slant. Personally, it's rather contradictory to my beliefs though, as it's a bit heavy handed and whack you over the head. Like it's hollering 'CONFORM!' AT YOU. Nothing horrible, nothing to write home about and I'll probably never read it again, but oh well.
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It was briefly mentioned already, but you really should be using Calibre.
It can convert DRM-free books between almost all formats, and does a good job of organizing books. Much better than the Sony library that I've suffered with for years with my PRS-500.
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Went and checked out Caliber, and I'm fairly unimpressed. It seems to have a real hard time doing partial matches for title/author search, IE the title or author has more information than it's looking for. It also seems pretty heavily dependent on ISBN for metadata searches.
Beyond that, the interface itself is pretty unintuitive; pulling books from a device doesn't auto-add them to your library. You have to go back and manually add them to the library, which strikes me as a fairly serious design flaw. All in all, it's not bad, and I'll keep it around for format conversion, but when I can just drag and drop books in an acceptable format to the Kindle, it doesn't strike me as particularly useful.
Coldstream wrote:
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The sequel to Daniel Suarez's debut "Daemon" is out on Kindle now. It's called "Freedom (TM)". Just as good if not better than the first.
Also, "Dust of Dreams" released today on the Kindle. Ninth book in the Tales of the Malazan series by Steven Erikson. Awesome series.
"Impact" by Douglas Preston is out in hardback now, but has a Kindle date of May 1! I think I'm going to write the publisher (Forge). That's unconscionable.
Republicans being against sex is not good. Sex is popular. -- GOP political strategist Alex Castellanos
Yea, I'm quickly finding my kindle backlog stacking up. I think I have around 40 books on varied wishlists on Amazon now.
edit - Here's the short list of what I have on the lists:
Landover
Dresden Files
Transitions - Drizzt from Forgotten Realms, guilty pleasure
Soldier's Son - Robin Hobb
Oh, and I'll probably be reading Malazan and the Suarez novels eventually.
Coldstream wrote:
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Transitions is less Drizzt than you'd expect unfortunately. I just finished the last two in the series and was somewhat underwhelmed. Still worth a read, but not of the same caliber as most of the earlier Drizzt works.
I usually think, 'This is for the rhubarb,' as I pull the trigger. -- Reaper81
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Bummer. The first one sets him up very well from the sample I read. I'll probably still read them, as I'm fairly heavily invested in the series, but such is life.
Coldstream wrote:
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That's why I read them, and if you've read the rest of the Salvatore/Forgotten Realms series(es) it's definitely still worth the read. Just not what I expected.
I usually think, 'This is for the rhubarb,' as I pull the trigger. -- Reaper81
My Blog - Photos to 40 | My Flickr Stream
I just finished Under The Dome (Stephen King) on my Kindle after a couple weeks of intensive reading. It's the first King book I've read in years, and I walked away far more impressed than I had any right to be (thinking that his Golden Years were far behind him).
Out of curiosity, I looked up the stats on the recent hardcover release at Amazon. Turns out the book is a honking 1088 pages (I suspected as much seeing it at B&N), and weighing in at just under 4 lbs.
It really was a convincing argument for devouring the eBook version as I imagine lugging around and holding up the 4 lb. hardcover is a lot less convenient than enjoying it on a 10 ounce Kindle.
360/iOS: DJ Dostoevsky
No doubt. Can you imagine the convenience of reading the entire Wheel of Time series on eBook vs. lugging around 10,000+ pages?
I usually think, 'This is for the rhubarb,' as I pull the trigger. -- Reaper81
My Blog - Photos to 40 | My Flickr Stream
No kidding. That's definitely one of the huge advantages in my book(lol pun) of e-readers; a simple reduction in weight. My current read is the first of two collected editions of the Landover series by Terry Brooks, and I'd imagine that's a fairly hefty volume as well.
Coldstream wrote:
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You think that's convenient, go Kindle on your iPhone. Whatever book you are reading is always with you!
I'll put in another nod for Daniel Suarez - Daemon kicked my ass, and as soon as I finish what I'm reading now (mediocre DA:O tie-in), I'm diving into Freedom.
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I was iffy on iPhones before my new job, but now I'm fairly set against em. I'd like one of those or a touch to replace the iPod, but there's no point in doing that now, since I can't take it to work.
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