Help Feed My Reading Elephant's Kindle

July 5, 2012 3:40 PM

Can you recommend something to read from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library? I have trawled through there for ages this month and last month and I'm having trouble finding something good that I haven't read before.

My preferences mainly run to history, fantasy, literary fiction and science fiction. Thanks.

posted by dragonplayer to Media & Arts (18 answers total)

The books of Donald Harington are in the Lending Library. The first of his Stay More books is Lightning Bug .
posted by elsietheeel at 3:46 PM on July 5, 2012

The Hunger Games Trilogy.
posted by grouse at 3:53 PM on July 5, 2012 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I enjoyed Water for Elephants if you haven't already read it.

I'm not a Prime member (yet) so I am having trouble finding a complete list of the books included. But the Hunger Games is always good as well if you haven't read it.
posted by Quincy at 4:01 PM on July 5, 2012

My first borrowed book from the KLL was The Hangman's Daughter. It took me a couple of chapters to get into it (I didn't like the writing at first) but now I'm about halfway through and enjoying it, though the omniscient POV means that some of the pacing is irksome when I'm reading a bit from the POV of a character I don't care much about.
posted by annathea at 4:05 PM on July 5, 2012

Best answer: The complete KLL list

A few that I've read or want to read:
Guns, Germs and Steel
The Worst Hard Time
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War
The Finkler Question
posted by kbuxton at 4:59 PM on July 5, 2012

Best answer: The KLL library is unfortunately sort of terrible, and I haven't found a good way of curating it yet. It helps if you can drill down through to specific genres you may like - it's sort of dominated by romance novels, so if that's not your thing, getting down to where those are filtered out helps a bit.

I was glad I used it to read The Five Love Languages, which gets recommended around here all the time, mostly because I kind of hated it, so I was glad that I hadn't paid for it. But clearly a lot of people really like it, so could be of interest or use to you to read free?
posted by Stacey at 5:24 PM on July 5, 2012

Best answer: I just downloaded this one to read on a long flight next week:

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
posted by MsMolly at 6:08 PM on July 5, 2012

I found this to be a very engaging read. I was sad to come to the last page.
posted by chazlarson at 7:30 PM on July 5, 2012

Best answer: I keep recommending the Wool Omnibus because it's really great and 1,225 people can't all be wrong. I am not a big fan of SciFi and I just devoured the entire series. (Previously)
posted by DarlingBri at 8:00 PM on July 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: While it doesn't fall into your preferred genres, I liked AWOL on the Appalachian Trail.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:00 PM on July 5, 2012

I read the first Hunger Games book through the KLL. The only problem is that you can only borrow one book a month. The Hunger Games books will each take you no time at all to read, and then you instantly want to read the next one, so you'll end up buying the other two anyway. At least, that's what happened to me!
posted by lunasol at 11:07 PM on July 5, 2012

Look through their free collections. There are lots of classic books.

http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_355831402_49?ie=UTF8&node=2245146011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=left-1&pf_rd_r=0K5NGYM95HBRA3MHKPKC&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1374232782&pf_rd_i=1286228011

Click the "see all top sellers" link at the bottom of the list to search and browse through all titles.
posted by xammerboy at 11:37 PM on July 5, 2012

I absolutely loved The Finkler Question -- it's literary fiction, and parts of it blew my mind.
posted by OrangeDisk at 8:54 AM on July 6, 2012

Mary Roach's books used to be in the Lending Library. They are all great.
posted by theuninvitedguest at 12:17 PM on July 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

I just read "Never Smile at Strangers" from the KLL. It was a typical which-person-in-this-small-town-is-the-nutty-killer type of book. Not great. Not terrible. I finished it.
posted by tacodave at 3:30 PM on July 6, 2012

Response by poster: Glad to see your recommendations. I have indeed read the Hunger Games and numerous classics before. I picked up the first few Wool books when the FPP ran a few months ago, but the Omnibus will help me finish the series later.

Thanks, this will help me tonight and the months to come.
posted by dragonplayer at 8:35 PM on July 6, 2012

Best answer: The Harry Potter books are now on KLL, if you want to read them over a period of seven months.
posted by grouse at 9:34 AM on July 22, 2012

Kitchen Confidential is non-fiction, but it seems quite good.
posted by grouse at 1:33 PM on August 9, 2012