Nothing new to talk about with books I’m reading this evening. I could tell you about a whole mess of books I’d like to read. I’ll save that list for another time though. Instead I offer up lists from two other sources.
The first, Top 100 Children’s Novels is curated by School Library Journal. They are counting down from 100 and have made it to number 50. Since they haven’t named number one yet, the list is fun to browse because it is hard to grouse about the order without having the top ten.
The second list comes from Locus Online and is more like lists instead of a list. It is the 2009 Locus Recommended Reading and includes science fiction, fantasy, YA, anthologies, novellas, collections and first novels. So if you are looking for something newish, you’ll likely find a few good choices here.
Finally, if you have been thinking you want a Kindle but needed an extra push to get you off the fence, maybe this will do it. The British Library is going to offer free ebook downloads for Kindle. Starting in the spring, more than 65,000 works of fiction from the British Library collection will be free for the downloading. The big guns like Dickens and Austen will be represented of course, but there will also be plenty of “penny dreadfuls” to enjoy. I can hardly wait!
The Locus list is intriguing – I’d heard of scarcely any of the authors mentioned. Not that I really need to add massively to the tbr right now…. but new names are irresistible.
Ooo I love the idea of the British library give us free kindle books! Of course, I don’t have a Kindle yet, but that is how it should be.
I’m so excited about the The British Library free kindle books. I already have all of Dickens and Austen and Walter Scott on my Kindle but they weren’t free for me as an international subscriber (2 bucks is not much, however, for all of Dickens to be formatted for me – wonderful!). I can’t wait to browse the catalogue.
I’m so excited about the free downloads for my Kindle!
I dont know if these are kindle friendly or not but Book Depository.com has 11000 free ebooks on its site. Some of the titles are really interesting and old
I don’t have a Kindle (yet) but I’m using my iPhone app Stanza to download free books. Using Stanza, I can access all the titles from Project Gutenberg, 25,000+ of them… although reading from a screen as small as the iPhone does not offer the best kind of reading experience.
How cool the British Library is going to begin offering free downloads–that would be fun. My library is totally pushing the Kindle (I think we have about ten of them that circulate) at the moment–complete with slideshow projected on a wall by the entrance that I don’t hang around long enough to watch. Maybe I’ll have to check one out once the downloads start being offered.
Litlove, the Locus list is intriguing, isn’t it? I’m not familiar with a number of the authors. It will be fun to see if any of them look especially appealing.
Rebecca, isn’t it great? I was surprised and delighted. And even though you don’t have a Kindle you could always download Stanza to your computer, it is free ebook reader software and it reads Kindle books among other formats as well.
Verbivore, I am very much looking forward to exploring what the BL makes available. I expect there will be lots of wonderful gems. Have you been to manybooks.net? They are connected with Project Gutenberg and you can download Kindle formated books for free. Even though you can download directly to your Kindle from their site I always find it easier to download to my computer and then transfer them to the Kindle because the Kindle browser is so dreadful.
Kathleen, I can hardly wait. I’ll be checking the BL website every week in anticipation.
Vipula, oh yes, I have been browsing those books for a week now. They are pdfs, not ideal, but they will work on the Kindle. Thanks for pointing it out!
Arti, I have Stanza on my laptop and used it a few times before Kindle supported pdfs to format some pdfs for the Kindle. It’s pretty handy. Are you tempted to get an iPad instead of a Kindle?
Danielle, wow, a slideshow on the wall by the entrance to let everyone know about the Kindles. The main undergrad library on campus has three Kindles I believe that they just acquired a few months ago. They are still working out all the kinks in the lending process. I’m not sure how frequently they get checked out. I’ll be curious as to whether or not they catch on.