What free books should I download to my new Kindle?
I ordered a Kindle, and it will be arriving any day. Amazon has over 15,000 free books. Gutenberg.org has twice that many in Kindle format. Openlibrary.org has some ridiculously high number of books to download.
I want to go hog wild and get all the free books I can.
I love classics. I love really good literature. I can’t read pulp or schlock. Fiction, primary sources of non-fiction accounts of travel or adventure, theater, plays, poetry, biography, and humor are some of what I love.
I like everything from ancient Greek literature right up to the 1923 cut off date to make it free.
What do you recommend I hunt for and read on my new toy?
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
21 Answers
5 people you meet in Heaven by Mitch Abolm – Mind Blowing
Have you read Pride and Prejudice ? Or Our Mutual Friend by Dickens? How about some E.M. Forster like A Room with a View or Howard’s End ?
@janbb : Not yet, but I will soon.
I read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte while on holiday last year and really enjoyed it (to my surprise)
@flutherother : Oo, I can’t wait to start reading the Bronte sisters.
@janbb : I adore E.M. Forster. I’ve read those but will gladly read them again.
Which one did you end up buying @Hawaii_Jake. My birthday is approaching and I am still unsure whether to go for a Nook or a Kindle and which Kindle to buy. How did you end up deciding and please share a bit of a review.
@Bellatrix : I haven’t got it in my hands yet. It’s en route in the post, but should arrive early in the week. A review will have to wait.
I went for the basic Kindle. I am at home all day with 3 computers in the house. I have no need for the Kindle Fire which does many things a tablet computer can do. I also chose the basic over the Kindle Touch, because I don’t like the idea of all those finger prints on the screen. But also because, once again, I have ready access to a computer: if I really need to look something up on Amazon, I can do it instantly.
I chose the Kindle over the Nook only because I have an established account with Amazon and none with Barnes & Noble, and because I already have the free Kindle app on my computer with several Kindle books that I bought. I want to be able to transfer them to the new e-reader.
I’m so excited about getting this new toy. Squee!
I am excited for you! I want one too and thank you for your process in deciding. I don’t know why it is so hard for me to make this decision!
Oh and Papillon – an amazing book.
The Book Thief is fabulous too.
Anything by Steinbeck.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The Trial
@Bellatrix -I have been looking for Steinbeck on free ebooks, I read everything of his when I was a kid and loved it all. I haven’t been able to find any, do you have a link?
I’ve downloaded a ton of stuff, my favourites being Phantom of the Opera, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Dorian Gray and anything by Jules Verne. Oh and all the Sherlock Holmes too.
The good thing about free, is it’s free so you can get what you like even if it’s something you think you may only vaguely be interested in. You can always delete it if you don’t like it.
I love my Kindle.
eyes opening wide, tic, tic, tic Free Books?!??? :O I’m so embarrassed to say that I didn’t realize this. Fwoosh. I must’ve missed that information somehow since it sounds from y’all that it’s been around for a long time. Either I didn’t process it, or just wasn’t in the right conversation to hear about this…
I don’t have a Kindle or Nook, but after watching your discussions, and after hauling about 45 crates of books around, it would be absolutely idiotic for me not to jump on this bandwagon, and I’m not a bandwagon jumper. The e-reader pays itself off almost immediately.
Free books… since I didn’t know those existed in the first place, I don’t know what to recommend, but the first I would take would be all my main childhood favorites- the Sherlock Holmes books, all Agatha Christie’s, all of the LM Montgomery books and Poe’s stories—those I’d get to expose my daughter to. I’d look for anything by Zora Neale Hurston (anthropologist/writer) and poetry books like those by William Blake and other Romantics, Walt Whitman… going to hunt…
Removed by myself because I didn’t finish reading the Q before telling you what you already knew
@linguaphile Yeah – many of the books that are now out of copyright are available for e-book download for free. I usually need to buy hard copy of books that I am teaching to mark and highlight but I will download a free copy to work on while traveling.
@linguaphile you don’t need to buy a kindle. You can download a Kindle app from amazon for free, for your PC, tablet or smartphone. And also many free ebooks are in pdf format so you need nothing more than Acrobat reader.
For anyone who might be interested, I just got my new Kindle, and I already love it. I already have 42 free books, and I’ve only had it for 3 hours.
@Hawaii_Jake Right behind you!! That is, after I get a new used computer. Mine is ready to go to the Happy Tech Grounds.
Answer this question