Sunday, October 27, 2013

free books

This may be one of those things that everybody already knows about. I am quite often late to the party.

Except that one time when I was hours early because I had the time wrong, and those people never invited me again, which makes me feel a bit foolish and sad.

Ahem.

Onward.

Here's something I find quite useful from time to time. And the price is definitely right!

Audiobooks are daily fare here, but a while back I wanted to read a book that was only available as a e-book. Rats. I don't have a Kindle or a tablet. My cellphone is a very basic pay-for-use, and while it may be smarter than me, it is certainly not a "smartphone." (To be honest, I'm not even sure what makes a smartphone "smart." Maybe my next phone will tell me.)

But I really wanted to read that book. So after doing a little poking around on the internet, I discovered and downloaded the free Kindle Reading App for my laptop.

Because here's what I didn't know: Amazon offers a free Kindle Reading application for all sorts of not-a-Kindle devices. See here, and click to embiggen:



It was So Easy. Also, Fast.

Also - did I mention? - Free.

And in keeping with the "free" theme running through this post, here's the bonus: you can also download free books from Amazon.

Amazon sells a quadrazillion books, of course, but they also offer loads of free e-books - thousands! - in all sorts of categories; everything from Jane Austen to gardening books. The list changes frequently. The search function works well.

For example, this morning I searched for "free kindle books canning preserving." Here are the search results, again with the clicking and embiggening:



Important: many books are free for a very short time and will soon revert to their usual price. So if you see something interesting, best download it immediately. I missed out on a book about dehydrating last week, but today I'll download several books on preserving.

These e-books will live quietly in my laptop library, perhaps until a snowy evening spent planning the next garden and feeding the woodstove.

And at that point, if a book doesn't look useful, a click will delete it. So much better than dusting the bookshelves (not a high priority task here, as you might imagine) and trying to decide - again - whether to keep a book I haven't opened since 1989.

If you haven't tried this app and would like to check it out, here's a link that should take you there.

Have fun! And if you find any special treasures, please come back and share them in the comments :)

~~~~~



14 comments:

  1. Quinn - Mindful of the distance to the nearest town, I purchased a Kindle ast year - the very basic Kindle. It was an absolute treasure during the winter months, when there was not enough sun to charge the batteries which meant I couldn't browse my favourite blogs :)

    RSon had downloaded a whole bunch of books for me (ahem, like 720 of them) so I haven't had to look for more free ones. Yet. But, thanks for the link - I will certainly check it out :)

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    1. Good gracious, 720 books! That would keep me busy for many winters :)

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  2. Quinn, I didn't know this and it's useful information. The first Christmas Dave's mother passed away, Dave said, "Mother bought us Kindle's for Christmas gifts." I said, "Well, all righty then. Thanks Crock!" Her middle name was Crockett (after the Davey Crockett clan) and folks called her Crock. It's a first generation Kindle but no complaints, I'm still find out stuff about it...most everything and everyone is smarter than me and I'm good with that -smile-.

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    1. Glad to be helpful! I've never even seen a Kindle, as far as I know, but from what Dani said above, it sounds like a Kindle will run for a lot longer than a charged laptop...nice during the inevitable winter power outages! I can do without lights and such, but I do miss my laptop once the battery is dead.

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  3. very interesting! I love audio books to sew to and with no TV we listen to them in the evening too, My 2 blind friends got me started on them and now I'm hooked!
    I borrow boxed CD sets or download them from our public library website.

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    1. Audiobooks are wonderful, aren't they? I've always been an avid reader, but when I was recovering from eye surgery 14 years ago, switching to audiobooks kept me from going mad. Even after I could read again, I was hooked. Like you, I download a lot of free audiobooks from the library and Libravox. It's such a luxury, being "read to." That's probably why it took me so long to stumble upon the free Kindle e-books. Bonus to the e-books: it's hard to pick up a new knitting technique from an audiobook ;)

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  4. I love my sony e-reader. I feel so powerful slipping 200 books into my purse on my way out the door. Unfortunately some of the books I'm waiting for are not yet available as e-books.

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  5. I knew about the app, but I did not know about the free kindle books! That's cool. I'm going to check it out!

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  6. I love my kindle app on my laptop. It means I can read eBooks when I need to, but not having an actual Kindle means my leisure reading still involves paper pages. A perfect balance in my book, if you'll pardon the pun :)

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  7. I have a new laptop that came with the Kindle app, and thus I'm very grateful to you for telling us about the free books - I've just discovered lots of free George McDonald books. ;-)

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    1. I'm so glad it was helpful! Thanks for leaving a comment to let me know :)

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