Its name is Enabler.

[mrissa]

I now own a Kindle. It arrived today (late Christmas present from timprov).

(Note to porphyrin: it is blue.)

My philosophy of this thing is that I do not want to use it to replace physical books I would actually buy. So what I'm reading on it right now is...my own book. (One of my old manuscripts, I mean.) If I'm critiquing a manuscript for those of you for whom I do that, it'll probably be on my Kindle rather than in a 3-ring binder. Ideally this will mean faster crits.

I'm also interested in the sorts of free things that are open source, so if any of you have recommendations for specific works or sites for getting free old books in Kindle format, please do say. Again, I will continue to do my book buying in physical form for stuff that's available in physical form. What I want on my Kindle is Project Gutenberg type stuff, although Baen's Free Library stuff is also a good category of thing to have. Oh, and the last category is stuff that's only available in e-book format. All good recs to have.

Comments

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

They come in blue?

I recommend feedbooks.com (http://feedbooks.com/). (Not least 'cause two (http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/2976) of my own (http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/14338) books are available there for free.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

timprov also gave me a cover for it. The cover is blue.

Also I am referring to a family joke. But it really is blue.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Also: awesome!

[zellandyne.livejournal.com]

Potentially useful software is Calibre, for sorting and tracking books. Also for changing formats, assuming there's no DRM on the file you wish to change. For example, I found some free books in epub form that I converted to read on my Kindle.

[shana.livejournal.com]

I got my Kindle last week. Most of what I have on it is from Project Gutenberg and Baen. Baen will email stuff to your Kindle, and many PG books are available in Kindle format; just download them while the Kindle is in USB drive mode.

Munseys is also a good source of ebooks in multiple formats. There's a large overlap with PG, though.

Archive.org has lots of books, but most are PDFs.

I find that PDFs come out in teeny type, though, so only those that were either in small page size or large type are readable.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

I've found that some PDFs work much better if I switch to landscape mode.

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

I'm curious why you don't want to substitute ebooks for any of your physical book buying? Not trying to talk you out of it, just curious.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

First, I don't trust the thing. They've taken people's books away from their accounts before; they can do it again. And yes, I could learn to break the DRM and back stuff up on my own computer, but really, how often am I going to do that? Backing up my own fiction is quite enough without having to back up everybody else's also. The thing could break, too--it doesn't require anybody to be nefarious for me to suddenly lose a book I'm in the middle of, and all the other books with it.

Also I like books. They make me happy.

But the other thing is, I have heard enough complaints about compensation on Kindle and other ebooks that I'm feeling like I should hold off until the kinks are worked out of that and I feel more confident that buying an ebook isn't going to screw the author. This is why things that are exclusively available in ebook are an exception: the author's contract is entirely focused on ebook sales rather than having that as a secondary clause, so they really truly ought not to be getting screwed in their own estimation.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

You may already own all of these, but Gutenberg has ALL the Lang XColorX Fairy Books. Plus an index. And scores and scores of old fairy tale collections with interesting themes, like Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations. And things I vaguely knew existed but couldn't readily find or afford, like the short stories of Louisa May Alcott.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Awesome. That's really the sort of rec I meant: "Hey, did you think about this title being available?" Although some of the sites listed by other people have been good too.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

I read all of those on my phone (the fairy books). SO freaking awesome.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

I know nothing from Kindles, but M has it now on his ipad. He put a bunch of the free stuff from the Kindle store on his-a ton of things we already own in book format-just so he could carry them around with him and have them all of the time just in case. For all of those times he doesn't want to carry the Complete Works of William Shakespeare around with him in hard cover, but might find himself in a line and want to toss back a few sonnets. This has worked well for him; he reread a ton of Sherlock Holmes and two plays on the flights from Costa Rica.

Also, it has not significantly reduced our purchases of actual books. We like our books.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That's exactly the sort of thing I mean, yes: having Jules Verne on hand to reread when I'm traveling or at the grocery store.

[ckd]

ManyBooks is the first place I look for Project Gutenberg type stuff; they've done a great job of format conversion for just about every ereader software or hardware setup.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Have already downloaded several things there.

[guppiecat]

Others have recommended Gutenberg for books and Calibre for conversion and transfer, so I don't delve into those.

I will, however, point out that Australia has friendlier copyright rules where public domain is concerned, and their version of Project Gutenberg is a good source for those series books that might be missing from the US version of the site.

You know, just in case you got a hankering to read the Anne of Green Gables series as an adult.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. Anne of Green Gables and all seven sequels are on my physical shelf. But it might not be bad to have them on my Kindle also.

[carbonel]

For Gutenberg recommendations, Daddy-Long-Legs and the sequel, Dear Enemy, are both available in Kindle format.

[sraun]

Did you get the latest generation Kindle? If so, I'd love to see it sometime. Any chance you'll make it to the Minn-StF Pool Party in not quite two weeks?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Less than zero chance, I'm afraid: I have both company and concert tickets for the Saturday that's not quite two weeks from now.

I don't know what generation it is, but I will likely have it in my purse at Minicon. I know that's a long ways off.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I think everything on Project Gutenberg is now available in Kindle format. I still prefer my smaller handheld (because it's more important for me to carry around less weight than to have a bigger screen), so I use MobiPocket. I have no idea how many of these Project Gutenberg books you already have on your shelves:
Girl of the Limberlost, Gene Stratton-Porter
North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell
vast quantities of P.G. Wodehouse
poetry and prose by Robert Louis Stevenson
Andrew Lang's colored Fairy Books
Robert Sheckley's early short stories
Poul Anderson's early short stories
Star Surgeon, by Alan Nourse (fans of James White might like it. It moves fast, and it's clearly *trying* to be liberal...but the racism fairy bit it hard in the 1970s.)

Dorothy Sayers' first two Wimsey novels are available as free ebooks, though the others are still covered by copyright. Try manybooks.net/authors.php Gutenberg doesn't have them, but Manybooks appears to have Kindle format.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is where the weird line breaks in the comment notification became alarming.

It told me that you had vast quantities of P. G. Wodehouse poetry.

And I went, "..." And then I went, "!!??!"

[stfg.livejournal.com]

I've been buying free things from the Kindle store. I got Anne of Green Gables, but I don't think I could find The Blue Castle. I bought a bunch of Frances Hogdsdon Burnett including The Secret Garden and A Little Princess. I've gotten Jane Austen, Willa Cather, Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper was free. I got a bunch (8?, 10?) of Andre Norton novels for $1.99. I considered buying Origin of Species, but did not.

I bought the Kindle for travel, and it is very useful to have a variety of things to choose from when away from my bookshelves. I also use it when I know I am not going to want the physical book. I live in rural Ohio and am in a book club here in town. We read The Lost Symbol. I bought it on Kindle because I did not want to look at it sitting on my bookshelves.

I do also like physical books better. I will often skip around in books, and it aggravates me that it is much harder to do that on the Kindle.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I bought it on Kindle because I did not want to look at it sitting on my bookshelves.

I applaud this. The only problem with buying bad books for Kindle is that one can't conclusively throw them away. When I look at my digital library at Amazon, it still has Twilight in it, which I bought a few years ago expecting a proper vampire book.

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

Just curious, which cover did you get? Mine (non-lighted amazon cover) was causing my Kindle to freeze/reboot frequently. If you have the same type, you may want to watch out for that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, I have the lighted kind. I would want it that way anyway because of things like being in a hotel room with markgritter and different sleep schedules, but I also paid attention to your comments at Christmas. So I would have warned timprov if he hadn't gotten the lighted kind.

[rmnilsson.livejournal.com]

We've goot a Nook. So far it's mostly got out-of-print books on cheesemaking. So I don't really have any recommendations.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Are you interested in non-fiction at all? There are a few sites out there that do free e-book downloads, like ACLS Humanities (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/acls/browse.html), though you might have to convert them to Kindle (with something like Calibre).

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Nuts, I just realized I posted a bad example--that most of these seem to be online reads rather than downloads.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Amazon has a pile of free kindle books that will auto-deliver to the device via the usual method. I recommend Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company (http://www.amazon.com/The-White-Company-ebook/dp/B000JQV2KC), which I said a bit about over here (http://marydell.livejournal.com/163714.html). It's a historical adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle, and it does everything that is right and proper in a historical adventure, and nothing else.