I just moved and had to leave all of my physical books behind, but I have my kindle.
What would you guys suggest for me to load it up with (hopefully free)?
What are you interested in ? Some suggestions : Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World it's a book about the materials around us : glass, paper, chocolate, concrete, porcelin, graphene, etc. It shows the history of the material, how, what and why it is the way it is. It's a short great read and gives you a new perspective of the world around you. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Some stories about the life of Richard Feynman, which was a nobel prize in physics but also a painter, lover, pick-locker, musical instrument player among other things. It shows how to think like a scientist and what it is and what it means to be scientific. Born to run, Superintelligence, The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb), Thinking Fast and Slow, Nicomachean Ethics, The Martian, The Rosie Project are some suggestions among different topics. You can search at http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ for free ebooks, they have over 30 millions ebooks. You can use the software 'Calibre' to create and organize your Ebook Library.
I'd read pretty much anything, just not books with a picture of Fabio and a woman with heaving bosoms on the front. Thanks for the suggestions. And gen.lib.rus.ec looks great!
Read Stoner. It's a delicately constructed portrait of an ordinary man and his mundane tragedies and victories. It's not for everyone but it has emotional punch if you don't require a sweeping melodrama with your fiction. I have an ePub of it somewhere
Isn't that a surprising little book? A friend of mine in Haifa of all places found stacks of this book in a used book store and sent me a copy last year. Another novel on a similar topic (with South African politics thrown in) is Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (Nobel Prize for Literature, 2003).
New York Times Magazine or somebody rediscovered it a few years ago so I knew it was well regarded. But it's surprising in that nothing really happens and you can't put it down (if you're into quiet books with no lazer gun battles). It's a series of minor dramas delivered in such a tender way that it invites you into an ordinary life that parallels your own struggles. I can't say enough about it and can't explain why anyone should read it because the plot sounds so boring. Those stacks might be worth something if they aren't the 2003 reprint.
Plenty of good recommendations here. I would like to add Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, you can find it in the link Creativity gave you.
Make sure you check out #goodlongreads—I know it's not technically a kindle book but there are some really awesome reads that will blow your mind. Some are practically book length. The nicest thing about #goodlongreads is that 99% of the articles there are timeless. Some of my favorites: This one's a novella: Also, demure's #thesundaypaper is pretty much the best thing ever and full of more great reads.
Paradise Lost: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20 The Tempest: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23042 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/86 Jane Eyre: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1260 A Brave New World: http://www.hedweb.com/huxley/bnw/ The Canterbury Tales: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2383 1984: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021h.html A Study in Scarlet: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/244 My Man Jeeves: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8164 Free in audio format: Free Culture: http://www.turnstyle.org/FreeCulture/ Playing for Keeps: http://podiobooks.com/title/playing-for-keeps/ Nina Kimberly the Merciless: http://podiobooks.com/title/nina-kimberly-the-merciless-classic/ Space Casey: http://christianaellis.com/?page_id=559
Forget all you sci-fi kids. "Complications" by Atul Gawande. Significantly better and more interesting than mary Roach's "Stiff" which is in a similar genre. His sequel to "Complications" does not quite follow thru but "The Checklist Manifesto" is worthwhile. "A Wild Sheep Chase" by Huraki Murakami. No one has a name in this novel. Blew my mind. Piece of mastery. I'm not a murakami fanboi but this book, this book is great. "100 Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - this is magic realism done really, really right. "Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut. (Really, read any of the "A" graded Vonneguts - he graded them himself - what is most important about Vonnegut is his style and how it was revolutionary and often revolutionizes or dramatically impacts his readers' approach to and takeaware from how one can write fiction) if you haven't read it, read Dale Carnegie's "How To Win Friends and Influence People" If you want good quality sci fi that will defy your expectations of both the author and the novel itself read "Eye of the Dragon" by Stephen King Read these short stories: - A&P by John Updike - The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman Perkins - A Rose For Emily by Faulkner - any parts of Dubliners you can - Joyce - Black and White by Dorothy Parker - read the Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Coleridge) - then listen to the Metallica version - read Christobel, also by Coleridge - read "The Hours" by Michael Cunningham - fucking read Beowulf, but ONLY Seamus Heaney's version or I guess JRRT - read "Crooked" by Laura McNeil
The Confusions of Young Torless is brilliant. The description/summary sums it up fairly well, but I would like to point out that the focus of the book is Torless' development through the disturbing stuff he sees.
http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=11953645011 Word Runner is coming to kindles, and kindle for Android. I am excited.
If you haven't read them already, there's a few classics you should read: The two or three books of Alice in Wonderland H. G. Well's The Time Machine Otherwise, here's a few e-books I've found (with links) that I personally liked (you can skip it if you're not a fan, at all, of sci-fi - because all of them have at LEAST some sci-fi elements, if not being predominantly of the genre): Starliner, by David Drake. Price at time of posting: Free. Rating: 8/10 - it's a calm and surprisingly mostly uneventful - a huge buildup with a very quick resolution that somehow DIDN'T feel unsatisfactory. Flying The Storm, by C. S. Arnot. Price at time of posting: Free. Rating: 9/10 a good 'post-apocalyptic' (not really - it's just a really unstable world after a big war, with leftover tech) action-packed story full of morally-dubious decisions. I love it. Imperfect, by David Adams Price at time of posting: Free. Rating: 10/10 a pretty short story but still an interesting read which made me, at least, wonder about the future of AI. Lacuna, by David Adams Price at time of posting: Free. Rating: 10/10 The first book of a series that has a (to me, at least) completely new take on the "first contact" premise. As soon as I find the opportunity, I'm buying the rest of the series - that's how much I liked this book. Black Hull: The First Season by Joseph Turkot Price at time of posting: Free. Rating: 7/10 - a little bit heavy on the "selling" elements like romance and eroticism, but otherwise the premise is pretty interesting. Though it IS just the first six episodes of the series - the first half of the book. Titans, by Edward W. Robertson Price at time of posting: Free. Rating: 9/10 - I loved the premise, and the execution was to match. There MIGHT be a sequel (there probably is) but this book stands very well alone. Ghost in the Machine, by C. E. Kilgore Price at time of posting: Free. Rating: 8/10 - I'm not going to lie, the main plot point of this book is a tiny bit of a stretch and probably aimed to sell - yet, somehow, I liked this book because of how it executed that plot point. It's also the first book in a series that I haven't read. Overall, I liked it even though it was at the midpoint between a romance novel, a sci-fi story and erotic literature. Fatal Boarding, by E. R. Mason Price at time of posting: Free. Rating: 6/10 - a little bit generic, yet there's enough nifty ideas to keep you hooked - even though the biggest plot twist is slightly disappointing. Still a decent read, especially for it's price. Deep Crossing, by E. R. Mason Price at time of posting: Free. Rating: 7/10 - I admittedly remember relatively little of this book, but I remember it being slightly better than it's predecessor - yeah I forgot to mention, it's a sequel to the book above. A Memory of Violence, by Percival Arbogast Price at time of posting: Free. Rating: 8/10. Interesting and relatively novel premise, though it's obviously meant to hook you in as it's the first book of a series, and the story itself ends at a cliffhanger. But it definitely succeeds, because it fed me enough information to make me want to buy the rest of the series. AI Apocalypse, by William Hertling Price at time of posting: $3.05 Rating: 7/10 - the ending was very, very anticlimatic, but the whole story up to that point lead me to think a lot about the future of AI and the precautions and measures we should take to ensure good relationships between us and an AI. That's all for now. I'll keep you posted if I find more books worth reading.
I just finished reading Cryptonomicon and Anathem, both by Neal Stephenson. If you're into extensively-researched thrillers, I'd give them a try. Both are over 1000 pages long. You can try out Blindsight by Peter Watts from here, and if you really like it (like I did) you can go buy Echopraxia. The rifters books, in comparison, are kind of shallow. Besides that, I don't have any outstanding recommendations in recent memory.
Thumbs up for Cryptonomicon and Anathem. Another sf recommendation: Wool by Hugh Howey. Not quite free, but well worth it.
I just finished Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. It's a good science fiction novel, but it didn't really grab my attention until I got about halfway through and they explained what the main character's motivation was.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bookdownloads/ This place has new free books everyday. I have more than twenty on file, I don't have time to read.
Within the Kindle store, there's stuff like The Art of War (which is a worthwhile read, if only to get cultural references) and The Federalist Papers for free. Most of the classics have a free version avalible, but it can be hard to sort through the junk with public domain books. Look at Project Gutenberg for a ton of free books. Again, mostly going to be older stuff, because of copyright laws. The Gutenberg Self-publishing site can also be interesting. There's a lot of junk, but if you are into poetry and experimental fiction, you can find some gems. Besides these, most of what I've found for free has either been crap pulp style, Wal-Mart romances, or erotica. If you're willing to pay, the best book I've read is One Hundred Years of Solitude, though it looks like a Kindle version will run you close to $30.
$30 is too much for me right now :( I'll check out Project Gutenberg though, I hadn't thought of that, thanks.