I knew the Kindle was going to change my reading habits, and it has. This month I’ve read ten books, six on the Kindle, most of which were free or cheap.
I found Lois McMaster Bujold’s first Miles Vorkosigan book, Warrior Apprentice, over at the Baen Free Library. I’ve been meaning to check out the series for a long time, having heard so many good things about it. I liked the first book well enough to get the rest of the series, especially since Baen has them as attractively-priced e-books on their site.
Other Kindle books:
Rakes and Radishes by Susanna Ives– I was looking for something Regency and romantic and frothy, and this fit the bill until it got really emotionally intense halfway through. There’s nothing wrong with tortured characters, but it wasn’t the tone I’d been looking forward to.
The Trouble with Kings by Sherwood Smith: Fun, light, romantic YA.
Spellwright by Blake Charlton: High-concept fantasy debut, but it took me a while to get over the cleverness of the magic system and into the story. While there were lots on interesting plot things happening, I didn’t connect emotionally with the characters.
Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion by Jane Austen: Why, yes, I’m filling up my Kindle with freebies. Sense and Sensibility is the only Austen I somehow missed reading, but I’ve corrected this oversight. I got so much into it that I had to re-read Persuasion next. Persuasion is my favorite Austen. I’m a sucker for second chances, mature protagonists, calm sensible heroines, and a hero in uniform.
I love how Austen creates small-scale and yet meaningful stories. She barely touches upon the war, social reform, or high-living celebrity aristocrats, and is content to stay in the quieter world of baronets and gentleman-farmers. Her books are a soothing interlude between all the Save the World fantasies I read.
My classics reading this year seems to have fallen into the Nineteenth Century Women Writers category. I already downloaded Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell and Middlemarch by George Eliot. Any other recommendations? *ears open*
Next up, my non-Kindle reads.
I saw my first Kindle last week – impressive. Not sure I’m ready for such high-tech reading yet…especially as we’ve just got two more large bookshelves 😀
Not sure if you saw my post on the forum so I’ll put it here:
Have you tried Mary Shelly? I think she was pre-20thC…
Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford wasn’t published until 1939 but she was born before the 20th C as was Baroness Orczy of The Scarlet Pimpernel fame.
Mrs Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. Published around 1794/5.
I love Jane Austen’s books – they are stories about the minutiae of every day life and the trials and tribulations arising from this. I like the humour and the way she puts her section of society under the magnifying glass. Happy reading! 🙂
I have read Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. I downloaded samples of The Mysteries of Udolpho, Fanny Burney’s Camilla, and another book whose name I can’t remember by Maria Edgeworth. I figured I’d give them all a try and see how far I get. 🙂
I have read The Scarlet Pimpernel and some of the sequels. I haven’t heard of Flora Thompson, and I’ll check her out, though she doesn’t quite meet my criteria by not publishing in the 1800s. 😀
Flora Thompson wrote Lark Rise to Candleford…and something else which escapes me. Glorious books about life which, when the book was published in 1939 (or thereabouts) had mostly disappeared. We did it at school and it was one of the few books I enjoyed 🙂
It’s certainly a very different life.
And there is Laura Ingalls Wilder. Glorious, glorious books which I still read from time to time 🙂