The Flood of Free Ebooks

I’ve been slightly alarmed at how the number of ebooks on my Kindle appears to be growing exponentially over time.  And because I swear I’ve been keeping to a book budget (ahem), the cause is probably the number of free (or bargain-priced) ebooks that are available nowadays.

Remember those days when freebies (especially if you were in a country outside the US) were a rarity?  That’s no longer the case – instead of grabbing every single free ebook on offer, I find myself being rather selective about the books I actually download.  But despite this new-found selectiveness, I still find my virtual TBR pile increasing by leaps and bounds.

It’s not just free ebooks though.  If it’s priced low enough, I have a bad habit of clicking that Buy Now button. My tipping point for impulse purchases (usually new-to-me indie authors) tends to be £1.50 or below.

Part of me is feeling slightly guilty that you know, I download all these freebies and never post about them* when I’m guessing the author/publisher views the promotion as, well, promotion spend.  So I’ve been pondering whether I should start a sporadic feature here where I actually Review a Free Ebook now and again (technically Review a Free (or Cheap) Ebook, I suppose).

And because I was bored (and this post lacked pictures), I made a little button**.

I thought the best way to kick this feature off was to share where I get my free*** and/or cheap ebooks.  So that your TBR piles can also spiral out of control.  You’re welcome.

Starting with the obvious – there’s always public domain books, i.e. books out of copyright, though be aware that copyright laws vary depending on where you live, and what may be legal in one country may not be in another. Project Gutenberg is probably the primary source for PD ebooks, but I like ManyBooks.net (who use the Project Gutenberg texts) because of their ebook formatting.  MobileRead is also a great source of beautifully-formatted ebooks. Public domain books I love:

• DADDY-LONG-LEGS by Jean Webster: I have a soft spot for this charming epistolary-style novel about an orphan whose college education is made possible by a mysterious benefactor.  And I really liked her JUST PATTY and WHEN PATTY WENT TO COLLEGE books too.
• Anything by LM Montgomery: Everyone’s heard of Anne of Green Gables, but I have a personal preference for LM Montgomery’s Emily trilogy (which doesn’t appear to be PD, alas). As much as I liked Anne-with-an-e, there is something about Emily Starr’s vivid imagination and quiet pride that spoke to me when I first read these books.

Not one for the classics?  There are various places where you can find new(er) releases on offer:

• I’ve found some bargains (free or otherwise) via the Daily Deals posted by Dear Author.  I like that these are targeted towards the genres I read, and also the quick commentary offered on the books.
  .
• Back at MobileRead, they also have a pretty active Deals, Freebies & Resources forum where people post offers (including audiobooks, if that’s your thing).  The posters also sometimes comment on the books in question, so you know they’re not duds.
  .
• Willing to pay a bit more?  Fictionwise, which is mostly used by small publishers nowadays, has weekly codes that offer x% off their books and this can be pretty good deals – last week’s was 55% off and this week is 45%. The MobileRead forum tends to have the most recent code, else you can make a guess – it’s normally the date of the Friday (mmddyy American-style).  I like the fact that E-Reads and Belgrave House (author backlist re-releases generally) books are available there – I probably wouldn’t pay full list price for these books, but they’re worth it if there’s a good coupon code.
  .
• The Amazon Kindle forums usually have a daily thread (or at least the Amazon UK website has) where people post free Kindle ebooks.  It’s a bit more of a slush pile and covers all genres, but worth flicking through if you’ve a spare few minutes.
  .
• Mills & Boon has free ebooks on Everyone’s Reading – they refresh these periodically.  Needless to say, I recommend the Kelly Hunter that’s currently available – MISBEHAVING WITH THE MAGNATE (I know, ignore the title).

So those are my main sources for free/cheap ebooks – do you have others? What’s your e-TBR pile like – do you succumb to cheap ebooks too?

**************

*Though to be fair, (a) I don’t post that often and (b) there are some books that you really don’t need to know about.

**My very first attempt at some sort of button in five-plus years of blogging.  The pretty font is Clipper Script courtesy of mawn.com.

***I hate the fact that I feel I have to state this, but just to be totally clear – I don’t condone ebook piracy.  Can’t afford books?  See above for sources for free AND legal ebooks.  Need to read a recent release?  Use your local library.

2009: Recap of My Reading Year Part I

This time last year, I posted an epic series of posts about my reading year (okay, five – that counts as epic for me).  This time around, not that many, I swear.

Looking back at the first half of 2009:

 

January

I started the year off with a bang, falling in love with Juliet Marillier’s “Heir to Sevenwaters” (warning: very spoiler-y post) and officially becoming a Marillier fangirl.  I then somehow started on LM Montgomery’s short stories and really, couldn’t stop – I pretty much spent the latter half of January immersed in LM Montgomery’s turn-of-the-century Prince Edward Island.

Eleven books read in total, counting the six LM Montgomery short story collections – I did say I was addicted, didn’t I?

 

February

Standout book of the month was Patricia Briggs’ “Bone Crossed” (urban fantasy) – did you even have to ask?  She has a gift for storytelling and I can’t get enough of her Mercy Thompson books.

And it was obviously quality, not quantity, that counted in February, because while I only read five books (seriously, what was I doing?), I also read and loved Lois McMaster Bujold’s “Horizon” (fantasy), which was a note-perfect ending to her Sharing Knife series, and Josh Lanyon & Laura Baumbach’s “Mexican Heat” (romantic suspense m/m), which I thought delivered both romance and suspense in spades.

 

March

Not a massively exciting month reading-wise, with seven books read over the course of the month.  I mostly read the latest books in various ongoing series, including Deanna Raybourn’s “Silent in the Moor” (historical mystery, with a wonderfully Gothic atmosphere) and Kelley Armstrong’s “Made to be Broken” (romantic suspense, and a solid read, as per my expectations).

But swept away in a wave of nostalgia after reading LM Montgomery back in January, I started re-reading Elinor M Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School books, and gosh, this brought back so many memories – I adored them as a kid and wanted to go to boarding school so badly.  I loved doing these re-reads, and even invested in some new-to-me Chalet School books – and ouch, these are expensive nowadays.

 

April

Now April was an excellent month for reading. 

Ilona Andrews’ “Magic Strikes” (urban fantasy) wowed me – from a rather so-so first book, the Kate Daniels series has grown into one of the best UF series out there, IMO.  I also loved Sarah Monette’s “Corambis” (fantasy), an incredibly satisfying finale to her Doctrine of Labyrinths series.

And then there was Karen Chance’s “Curse the Dawn” and Jim Butcher’s “Turn Coat”, both immensely enjoyable installments in the Cassie Palmer and Dresden Files urban fantasy series respectively. 

I read nine books this month, very much dominated by the fantasy genre, but also including two Agatha Christie mystery short story collections, which had a nice mixture of new-to-me stories and old favourites.

 

May

Ah, May.  I read seven books in total, but there were two standouts for me. 

Diana Peterfreund’s “Tap & Gown” brought her Secret Society Girl series to a close, and did so in the most perfect manner possible. 

And I finally got my hands on Eva Ibbotson’s “Magic Flutes”, thanks to Young Picador re-releasing her backlist in the UK.  Her historical romances are pure joy to read – some of her turns of phrase are almost magical, and I am in love with her ever-so-slightly exotic continental European settings.   And of course, the enchanting characters.

 

 

June

Well.  I did a minor Josh Lanyon glom, reading three of his novellas (“Lovers and Other Strangers”, “Someone Killed His Editor”, and “Don’t Look Back”) in quick succession, all which had his trademark wry humour and wonderful characterisation.

And read two more books, neither of which I fell in love with, and then I sort of went into a reading slump.

 

 

So that was the first half of my reading year: 44 books read in total, with some excellent ones in there, but ending on a bit of a downer.  However, things improved substantially in the next month…

To be continued…

A Few of My Favourite… YA Books

I’ve been horribly remiss at not mentioning The Book Smugglers’ YA Appreciation Month previously, but hey, I’m guessing you all know about it already (and if not, there is still a week to go!).

Anyway, today, they have invited all and sundry to join the party – if you’ve a YA-related post, just go over to their site and add your link.

I don’t really blog a lot about YA (you could argue I don’t blog a lot, full stop), but YA makes up a good proportion of my reading diet. 

So in honour of YA Appreciation Month, here are a few YA books / series that have been on my mind recently:

 

The “why did I take so long to read this” YA series: Megan Whalen Turner’s Thief books

Megan Whalen Turner (warning: reviews on her website have spoilers for the previous books) has created an incredible series.  I think fans of The Thief may be hitting critical mass – certainly I have noticed more and more mentions of these books in the blogosphere recently.  Ana did a fantastic spoiler-free review of the series and pretty much echoed my thoughts.

I always read the copyright page before plunging into the book (I’m surely not the only one out there), and “The King of Attolia” had these as library keywords:

1. Kings, queens, rulers, etc–Fiction  2. Soldiers–Fiction  3. Loyalty–Fiction  4. Robbers and outlaws–Fiction  5. Adventures and adventurers–Fiction

How could you not be excited about a book with those keywords?

This is very definitely a standout series, YA or otherwise (and expect a separate post coming up!).

 

Next up, the “YA book that needs more love” book: Sharon Shinn’s “Summers at Castle Auburn”

Coriel, the illegitimate daughter of a high-ranking aristocrat, spends most of her life learning herbal medicine from her grandmother, but she spends her summers with her half-sister, Elisandra, at the royal castle where Prince Bryan resides. Corie has always been secretly in love with Bryan, but she is slowly realizing that he is a spoiled, selfish, dangerous man—and that Elisandra dreads her upcoming marriage to the prince. Corie hopes that the prince’s cousin Kent will save Elisandra, while she wonders if the taciturn guard Roderick might play a bigger part in her own life.

I adore Sharon Shinn’s writing.  No matter what she writes.  And she has a trick of closing her books with the most magical lines ever.  Her Samaria and Twelve Houses series get quite a few mentions (and they sit on my keepers shelf), but I don’t hear a lot about this standalone YA of hers.

“Summers at Castle Auburn” is one of my favourite Shinns, a perfect coming-of-age story.  It is very much a comfort read for me, and it never fails to satisfy.  Here’s a review from Jennie – seeing that she read it on my rec, I’m really glad she enjoyed it!

 

And finally, the “I’ll never outgrow this YA series” books: Tamora Pierce’s “Song of the Lioness” quartet

Call it fate, call it intuition, or just call it common sense, but somehow young Alanna knows she isn’t meant to become some proper lady cloistered in a convent. Instead, she wants to be a great warrior maiden–a female knight. But in the land of Tortall, women aren’t allowed to train as warriors. So Alanna finds a way to switch places with her twin, Thom, and take his place as a knight in training at the palace of King Roald. Disguising herself as a boy, Alanna begins her training as a page in the royal court. Soon, she is garnering the admiration of all around her, including the crown prince, with her strong work ethic and her thirst for knowledge. But all the while, she is haunted by the recurring vision of a black stone city that emanates evil… somehow she knows it is her fate to purge that place of its wickedness. But how will she find it? And can she fulfill her destiny while keeping her gender a secret?

Tamora Pierce has written many books since her first Alanna series, but the Alanna books are the ones I always end up re-reading (and there are some scenes that always end up with me sniffling, even though I know exactly what is going to happen).

Angie included Alanna in her recent post on “Stubborn Girls (and Why I Love Them)” and I have to agree whole-heartedly.

 

Interestingly, all these three are straight fantasy – something that I wasn’t actively thinking about when I was thinking about the YA books I wanted to highlight.  All three are also pretty much coming-of-age stories, which is much less of a rarity in the YA genre.

I could have chosen many other YA books – LM Montgomery’s Emily trilogy is amongst my all-time favourites, I was addicted to LJ Smith’s books, including her “Secret Circle” and “Dark Visions” trilogies, I buy Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books as soon as they hit the shelf, and I’m on a mission to complete my Eva Ibbotson collection… however, I think I’ll stop here and head off to check out everyone else’s YA posts! 

Not Exactly a Reading Slump

But I’m still reading my LM Montgomery’s short stories.  Which I’ve been doing for the past three weeks, on and off.  I’ve also downloaded a few more of Ms Montgomery’s books from the mobileread.com collection of public domain books (which, btw, is a fantastic resource for free and beautifully formatted ebooks) and I don’t see an end to this glom anytime soon.

I’m on my last collection of short stories now, and have just come across this wonderfully in-depth series of articles discussing various books and short stories written by Ms Montgomery.  I love the author’s personal take on each book, and how she references additional information, whether it is the influence of the time period when the story was written, how the story relates to others in Ms Montgomery’s backlist, or even how the short story collections were grouped together for publication.  And now I really want to re-read my Emily books.

Which I could potentially read for Nath’s Re-read Challenge.  Which is on my list of things to get done err… between now and midnight tomorrow.  Which means well, I am probably going to read a short-ish book.

Now Reading…

LM Montgomery’s short stories, except I will have to put them down soon-ish and go dig up a category romance for Keishon’s TBR Day challenge.  Ms Montgomery’s probably best-known for her Anne of Green Gables series, though I much preferred her Emily trilogy.  I do have to say that “Rilla of Ingleside” (the last of the Anne books) had enough romance and heartbreak to satisfy the romantic in me and I recall reading and re-reading the last chapter many times.

Anyway, I can’t remember what inspired me to go look for her short stories, but I’m glad I did.  They’re making me slightly nostalgic, because I read so many of her books when I was younger.  Revisiting her world, where girls named Nan and Theodosia are studying to be teachers or making up dresses for a social, and when letting a man walk you home from prayer meeting is an indication of serious interest, is a very refreshing break from the more recent paranormals or urban fantasy that I’ve been reading.

I’m amazed at how much “story” she can pack into a few pages, how she so quickly makes you care for her characters, whether they be whimsical or practical, on the brink of womanhood or approaching middle-age.  Some of them can get a bit same-y after a while (I suspect I’m not meant to read around fifty-plus at one go), and there are some misses amongst the many hits, but most of them are fantastic feel-good stories and a lovely peek into a bygone era.