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?
Not sure if your device supports connection to your public library, but I have been reading literally hundreds of books since Covid on my iPhone using Libby at first, and now the Palace Project. I still purchase the odd book if it’s one I know I will read repeatedly but I haven’t bought an ebook in some time due to using the library.
Good list, btw. I loved the Arkady Martine books. You might want to try Gideon the Ninth and the sequels.
Can you tell me more about those two options? What’s the difference between them, and why did you switch? Is it easy to find and borrow recent books, or is there a waiting list?
Not OP but I have both Libby and Cloud Library because I have library cards for 2 different libraries. I default to Libby but if they don’t have the book I’m looking for I check Cloud Library. Both are really easy to use though. There’s usually a wait-list for new/popular books, but sometimes your library will acquire additional digital copies. It’ll tell you your expected wait time and how many people are in front of you.
Sounds worth checking into. Not really anything to lose, right?
Absolutely worth checking into IMO. If your e-reader device does support library connections, so much the better, but if not, your phone/tablet will.
In addition to e-books, your library also likely offers access to other services including streaming. I have access to Kanopy, which has an interesting catalog of movies and shows that is well outside the mainstream. I’ve found some interesting stuff on there to consume even though I don’t use it as often as Netflix/Apple/etc.
Regarding Libby and the Palace Project, I used Libby for some time but shifted to Palace after reading (here, here) about the e-book lending market space and how ripe for enshittification it is at present. (Overdrive, the company behind the app of the same name and the Libby app, was recently sold to private equity firm K.K.R., notorious for horrible business practices. Overdrive controls about 90% of the library lending market, so I’m a little fearful for what might come.) The Palace Project is a non-profit, so I’m supporting it as a competing platform in case Overdrive starts to tank. The Libby app is more polished, but the search, borrowing and reading experience on Palace is largely comparable and still just fine.
Thank you, I appreciate the thoughtful response. I’ll check into it.
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.
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.
I usually just look for what’s available now and start reading. Found a few good titles unexpectedly that way.
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.
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.
Oh, that’s a nice service as long as the people know their stuff more than “Well this is the same genre…”
From what I’ve heard, they’re very good. They even write a short description of why they selected each book.
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!
Okay, thanks
Thanks for mentioning this - I have a similar reading style to you and have recently been considering KU, so this is really helpful!
I have found Kobo and Z-Library to be worth it for sci-fi.
+1 for zlibrary.
Not familiar with those. Any comments on them or the differences between them?
It’s a little tongue in cheek. Kobo has good support for uploading your own ebooks. Z-Library is a user sharing and exchange site with excellent breadth and depth of content, but technically is copyright infringement. The onion site works great.
I tried KU for a month or two but I couldn’t find enough good books to read to justify the cost. Instead I just got a digital library subscription and read on my phone/tablet.
I guess I could just do the free trial and answer my own question. How much is the monthly fee, by the way?
The kindle fee is 13.99 aud/month for me which is pricy by my standards. The library however is totally free but it doesn’t have every book I want. So it’s either wait for a physical copy at the library, just buy it outright, or take it off the reading list.
Hmmm okay. So the KU would be fine if I read at least two books a month. I’ve been doing closer to four, but they haven’t all had a KU option, especially the latter books of a series.
I guess I can try the free trial and see.
For sure, good luck!
As everyone here is suggesting, the public library is the best way to get sci fi for the Kindle. Whatever app yours uses, it just connects you to Amazon to download the book for free, for 1-3 weeks, whichever you choose. Sometimes there is a wait, place a hold and it shows up eventually.
I buy via B&N, Kobo or the Play store. B&N and Kobo tend to have better quality epubs (embedded fonts, larger images) but the play store runs more sales. I don’t buy ebooks from Amazon, their deals with publishers don’t pay authors enough money. If at all possible I try to buy self published ebooks to support authors directly, same deal with magazine subs - I pay Clarkesworld and Lightspeed directly and download epubs from them.
I’ll check those out, thanks
If you like Space Opera, try the Kris Longknife series (starting with Kris Longknife: Mutineer) and the Aeon 14 books by M D Cooper (starting with The Complete Intrepid Saga) - all of which are on Kindle. Also on Kindle: Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1) All books in the series John Ringo’s Empire of Man series starting with March Upcountry
Thanks, I’ll poke into those.
K U is awesome on the free trial but I wouldn’t (didn’t) renew for money.
Check out the Omega Force books. They are a really fun read. Sort of like Guardians of the Galaxy but less magicky.
Thanks!
I use smashwords personally, they don’t have all the big authors but I have read dozens of multiple book series, and lots of them are free
IDK about sci-fi specifically, but I have scribd and use it extremely heavily, mostly for audiobooks, but they usually have both if they have an audiobook.
Discoverability isn’t great, and the catalogue is not comprehensive, but it’s reasonably large, especially compared to Kindle Unlimited, and I can often listen to complete series (I mostly read mysteries, personally). Sometimes, if you read several books of a series in a month, it makes you wait until the next month to start a new book in that series or by that author, but I read a lot of books and don’t hit that that often. I can give a link to a 60 day trial (you can use PayPal and immediately cancel the renewal through the PayPal interface to avoid a charge) if you want it.
I also use Libby and Hoopla through my library. They have different models and different libraries, but there is a lot you can read for free legally.
Okay, thank you, and let me think about your kind offer. I’m likely to do the KU trial first.
