8 Ways to Get Free Books

You're fabulous, you're literate, and you're poor.

So how do you get your book fix without being chased out of the Barnes and Noble cafe in the middle of the novel you've been "browsing"?

Free books. Free NEW Books.

I don't in any way condone stealing copyrighted works, so we're not going down that path- but I've compiled a list of ways anyone can read for free (or "cheap as free").


-First Reads: Free book giveaways: This combines the joy of reading the unknown with the adrenaline that comes from entering the lottery. That's right, you can join Goodreads.com, and then enter to win a pre-release book that's been listed by an author or publisher. The variety of books is extensive, and there's a big reading/discussion community on the site as well.

-BookCrossing: An awesome and incredibly unique book sharing experience that I can't wait to try! Step 1: Label a book from your collection with one of the special bookcrossing barcode. Step 2: "Share" the book by either giving it away to a stranger or friend, leaving it on the table at a coffee shop or on the train, or any other way you wish to release it into the wild. Step 3: Follow the book online to see where it's going and where it has been. According to the website, over 850k people registered nearly seven million books which are traveling around 130 countries. That's awesome, free, and fun. Try it!

-Kindle eBook Lending: For 14 days you can lend an ebook to another friend who has a Kindle, or has the Kindle app for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, or Android. Sounds awesome, yeah? Only drawback? Not all books are lendable, AND the lender can't read the book during the loan period. This leads us to...

-BookLending.com: If your friends don't have e-readers yet, or you're just looking for a wider variety of choices, BookLending.com is the place for all e-reading people to come together and loan out their books. The site matches borrowers with lenders at no cost.

-Free-Ebooks.net: It's the posting place for a lot of indie authors who just want to get their work out there, or booksellers who want to provide samples. You can read on your computer, iPad or iPhone.

-BooksFree: Despite the name, it isn't entirely free, but it is very inexpensive. For about $11 USD per month, you can check out two books at a time. The price is low, but the selection may not be the best if you're looking for mainstream, popular novels. I'll also point you to...

-Bookswim.com: It bills itself as "The Netflix for Books", and that's a pretty accurate title. The selection is good, but the pricing plans start at $23.95 a month for 3 books at a time OR 1-book-a-month for $9.95+3.99 shipping fee. Yeah, it's cheap-as-free over time, but there's always the totally free option, like...

-The Library: this is a big "duh" for some, but I've come across many people who don't realize their local library has an extensive New Release section. Most library systems in the US allow you to browse their catalog online, and reserve a book- so you can get in and out of the quickly. As long as you return the book on time and keep up with your library card-- it's the free-est and easiest option available.

Have other links or suggestions? Comment below, or send the cast an email at thelibraryshow@gmail.com!

The Library #3: Meta Moments with the Kardashians

Direct Download

Subscribe via iTunes

In this episode, we're welcoming a new cohost, Megs, who faces a trial by fire by getting through Kardashian Konfidential, this week's "Celebrity Scribes" book.  We received feedback from you concerning our regularly scheduled read, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and we listened!  You said you needed more time to finish the book (and so did we!) so we'll be talking about it on the next show.  In the mean time, Jen, Rose, and Megs discussion vacation reading, knitting while jogging, and all and sundry.  It's a proper book club discussion!  . 

Upcoming books are The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson for our Top Shelf Review and John by Cynthia Lennon for the Celebrity Scribes Review.

Call (646) 926-READ and leave us a voicemail with your reactions to Kardashian Konfidential , The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, some feedback about the this show, or (as always) suggestions for books to read in the future!

Follow us on Twitter for updates! We're @thelibraryshow.

Music Credits: Alex East, and The Twelves  

Direct Download

Subscribe via iTunes

Entertain your idle thumbs today!

Your mission: 

1. Click here. (will open our podcast page in iTunes)

2. Give our podcast a five star rating.

3. Leave a comment.

4. Listen to the next show to hear a shout to you from The Library book club!

The "Real" Culver Creek

I just had to share this video of John's for those of you that do not follow the vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green's YouTube channel. In this video John visits his old high school boarding school, which is the school that Culver Creek (the setting for Looking for Alaska, of course) was very closely patterned after.

This is perhaps my favorite vlogbrothers video. If I could ever put my thoughts into words as elegantly and articulately as John Green does - well, I'd be able to capture a little bit of my understanding of the world and share it with others. Maybe someday.

-Jen

Controversies regarding Looking for Alaska

Hello Library friends!

On the last episode of The Library Show we discussed Looking for Alaska, by John Green. We touched briefly on the fact that this book is often considered controversial. I wanted to give us some space here to discuss such controvery.

The website safelibraries.org frames Looking for Alaska as pornographic, supposedly alerting parents to the dangers within its pages. It counts the number of times inappropriate words are used within the book, not distinguishing any sort of gradient for the level of inappropriateness – so words like “hell” and “fuck” are counted as the same. Thus safelibraries.org has calculated that Looking for Alaska has 1.3 inappropriate words per page. (Of course personally, that just makes me proud of this book) The website then goes on to list a few passages from the book – the two sex scenes that it contains. Of course these scenes (just like the inappropriate word list) are given no context at all. Out of context, I can see why these scenes might scare some parents… sex seems to be treated so flippantly.

However! Anyone who has read the book knows that these scenes are quite different from each other – one is decidedly unsexy (that is the whole point) and the other, while being significantly less explicit, is quite a bit sexier. This brings me to my entire point of this post – context matters. All of the pages and words surrounding these passages and the words listed in the inappropriate word list make it so that we can see, and understand, why these elements are in this book. We can see why it is necessary to tell this story with these words – why it matters that Pudge’s friends at Culver Creek drink, smoke and talk about sex all the time. We can see how a book that uses the word sex 28 times, apparently, is not actually about sex at all, but about emotional relationships and coming to grips with love and loss. Without these elements the story, and the wonderful themes that we can draw from it, would not be possible.

With that said, were you surprised at the content of this book? Did it ever make you feel uncomfortable that a “Young Adult” novel would contain characters that drink and smoke and talk about sex? Or rather did you feel as though these things grounded these characters and made them more real for you?

Also, for your viewing pleasure, I feel like it is appropriate to share John Green’s video blog regarding this subject. Personally, I feel he is well spoken and inspiring as ever:

Soooo, what do you think?

-Jen

Machine of Death

I wanted to pass along a book recommendation that doesn't really fit well for our book club discussions on the show, but is more than worth your trip to your local library(yay!):

Machine of Death: A collection of stories about people who know how they will die

(sounds morbid, right? It's good. Read on.)

The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. No dates, no details. Just a slip of paper with a few words spelling out your ultimate fate -- at once all-too specific and maddeningly vague.

A top ten Amazon Customer Favorite in Science Fiction & Fantasy for 2010, The Machine of Death is an anthology of original stories bound together by a central premise. From the humorous to the adventurous to the mind-bending to the touching, the writers explore what the world would be like if a blood test could predict your death.

-Amazon.com description

It's a collection of crowdsourced short stories edited by Ryan North, David Malki, and Matthew Bennardo.

The idea: The guys solicited short stories from people online for four months, they chose the manuscripts they liked from the nearly 700 submissions, paid the writers of the submissions, and put everything together in a book.

Thanks to a clever internet campaign, the book jumped to #1 on Amazon, and beat out Glenn Beck's latest book for the top spot, prompting a wonderfully ill-informed tantrum from the right-wing pundit on his radio show.

If that's not a reason to read it, I don't know what could convince you, really.

I bought the book for my Kindle the other day, and it's been an incredibly fun, and rather refreshing read thus far. If you're reading Episode 3's book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, you'll probably need a breather about halfway through... I recommend this for a small palette cleanser.

::Kim::

The Library #2: Looking for Alaska

Direct Download

Subscribe via iTunes

In this episode, we're reading and reviewing Looking for Alaska by John Green, and LA Candy by Lauren Conrad. 

Episode spoiler alert: we loved one book, and felt violated by the other.  Points for any correct guesses as to the titles.

Upcoming books are The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and Kardashian Konfidential by um... the Kardashians.  

Call (646) 926-READ and leave us a voicemail with your reactions to Looking for Alaska, some feedback about the this show, or (as always) suggestions for books to read in the future!

Follow us on Twitter for updates! We're @thelibraryshow.

Music Credits: Alex East, The Twelves, and a very camp version of Carmina Burana

Direct Download

Subscribe via iTunes