In the last few months I’ve read:

  • Project Hail Mary, Weir
  • Fall, Stephenson
  • The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Gaiman
  • The Ultimate Earth, Williamson
  • The first four Discworld books, Pratchett
  • Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge, Resnick
  • A Memory Called Empire, Martine
  • A Desolation Called Peace, Martine
  • The first five Murderbot Diaries books, Wells
  • The Imperial Radch trilogy, Leckie
  • Annihilation, Vandermeer
  • The Kingston Cycle trilogy, Polk

For comparison, I think I read two or three books last year. It’s starting to be a non-trivial amount of money, even though they’ve all been the ebook versions, which are generally a little cheaper. Has anyone who reads a lot of SF found Kindle Unlimited to be worth the price?

  • ch00f@lemmy.world
    11·
    9 months ago

    The one downside to the library option that everyone is suggesting as someone who has been subscribed for a while is that if the book is popular, you only get it for a few weeks at a time.

    I tend to read just a few pages at a time before bed, and I found myself struggling to finish books on time. Or a book I wanted became available during a week when I really wasn’t in the mood to read.

    If it takes you more than two weeks to read a book, it might not be a good option for you. Though it is free to try.

    • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      Thanks! It did occur to me that KU is like a library, do maybe I should check mine. I’m in Los Angeles county, so I looked at the LA county library page. They have a lot of good titles, but everything in interested in reading at the moment has a long wait list. I’m not sure if there are better library options available to me.

      • ch00f@lemmy.world
        3·
        9 months ago

        I usually just look for what’s available now and start reading. Found a few good titles unexpectedly that way.

        • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          I did that for a while decades ago, and ended up reading a lot of stuff I thought was pretty crappy. Then I became friends with a coworker who was also a reviewer for Locus Magazine, and he started helping me pick his to read. The difference in my reading enjoyment was exponential. So now I’m more particularly, and pay a lot of attention to things like Hugo and Nebula award nominees.

          • ch00f@lemmy.world
            2·
            9 months ago

            Oh our library in Seattle has a service like that! You can list books you like, and the librarians will provide a human-picked list of suggestions.

              • ch00f@lemmy.world
                2·
                9 months ago

                From what I’ve heard, they’re very good. They even write a short description of why they selected each book.

      • Stormeggeddon@lemmy.ca
        1·
        9 months ago

        Just wanting to echo the suggestion for linking the kindle to the library. It took a while but basically I just did a massive number of books I was partially interested in (>25) and got on the waitlist. If you then don’t have time you can always defer and set the number of days to defer by (e.g. just a couple) but after only a month or so of reading new books I’ve had constant opportunities to read big name books over the year. There is also sometimes a special “skip the line” copy which can give you a bonus week reading early!

    • keanu0396@lemm.ee
      1·
      9 months ago

      Thanks for mentioning this - I have a similar reading style to you and have recently been considering KU, so this is really helpful!