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Students come to peer over my shoulder and see what books are on my Kindle Fire. Sometimes I’m willing to show them, sometimes I’m not. Many of my Kindle ebook titles are lendable. I obtain many to share with students and my new grandchildren. However…, I have some titles that are for adult eyes only. During the day, I keep those in the Cloud and download them in the privacy of my home.
While discussing this with some former students of mine who are now in high school, we were able to talk about the need for privacy in reading choices. We agreed that digital downloading ebooks made it easier to obtain books that they didn’t want their friends to read. I used this as an opportunity to talk about ALA’s Choose Privacy week.
One example of a title I didn’t want everyone to know I was reading was
The Founding Fathers: American Legends by Charles River Editors. I love history and reading about heroes and legends. I discovered this title through a service called PIXEL OF INK.
I am loving my emails from Pixel of Ink. Every day they email me titles that are temporarily available for free downloading from the Amazon store for my kindle. I specified that I wanted to receive their adult fiction, and their young edition. Here’s the description they provided for The Founding Fathers: American Legends.
The Founding Fathers have held a special place in American society since the nation gained its freedom, and many of them had become national heroes even before then. Over 200 years later, Americans still look with reverence to these men, often debating with each other what the Founding Fathers would think about a certain issue, or how they would judge a certain law or legislation. In many respects, these men have become icons, whose words, thoughts and deeds are rarely questioned.
Like all legends, the staggering accomplishments of the Founding Fathers not only earned them monuments and memorials but helped enshrine their legacies, to the point that they are looked at almost as demigods above reproach. The Founding Fathers examines all of the colossal events and actions these men took, but it also analyzes what these men were really like, and how their personalities and passions helped shape the destiny of the country they founded and led.
Another title that has totally fascinated me has been Chemistry for Everyone by Suzanne Lahl 
and illustrated by Cris Qualiana. In high school, I loved chemistry taught by Mrs. Pope. I found chemistry finally made mathematics useful and interesting. I was also thrilled to have a female science teacher and admired her greatly. When my #1 son decided to take Chemistry and Advanced Chemistry in high school, I was so thrilled to be able to share this love of science with him. Imagine my surprise when I saw just how far the field had gone since my studies 20 years earlier. His textbook resembled the college textbooks I drooled over in the college bookstore. I wanted to read his entire book, yet thought I wouldn’t be able to bridge the gap.
Allow came Chemistry for Everyone. It is intended to provide a big picture of chemistry for those who want to take a chemistry class in high school or in college. The author encourages the reader to read this during the summer before class to have time to absorb some of the concepts and to contemplate the larger world.
Last night I was reading aloud Chemistry for Everyone to my husband while we sat drinking coffee in a local Waffle House. I couldn’t contain my excitement over quickly grasping and refreshing myself on chemistry topics. I couldn’t wait to share this with my friends. I got so excited over contemplating Mole and Molarity, Solubility, and Bonding that I looked up and said it was making me shiver with glee. Then I asked the question we librarians should never ask, “Does liking this make me a geek?” The answer is always yes, so why do I even bother to ask?
Back to why I like getting my ebooks on my Kindle Fire reader — PRIVACY. Those at Waffle House listening to my mesmerizing read-aloud at eleven p.m. last night may not always appreciate my choices, but through my device, no one else has to know what’s exciting me.
If you haven’t checked out Pixel of Ink or similar services, please do give them a look. They save me a great deal of time and have provided a wide variety of titles available free of charge for limited times. They save me time looking and lots of money sampling. If I like the first title in a series, I do go back and buy the rest of the series. I think authors and publishers who offer these freely are doing a good job marketing their titles. While libraries have to worry about those publishers charging ten times what a title costs a general citizen, services like Pixel of Ink help fill in my reading gaps at greatly reduced or free rates.
Already this summer I’ve read 22 adult titles with dystopian worlds, disasters, zombies, and more. Some of these include: Ruling Passion by Alyxandra Harvey (one of my favorite romantic without any naughty stuff vampire titles for teens), Zomblog, The Last Jump: A Novel of WWII, Bad Waters, The Walking People, Sector C by Phoenix Sullivan, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Smoke and Magic, Murder on a Girl’s Night Out by the late Anne George, Sleepers, Breathless, Algebra Unplugged, Star Wars Lost Tribe of the Sith,Christine Feehan’s The Leopard Series Books 1-3, and a few others I choose not to name.
Pixel of Ink offers several different lists on their blog as indicated below.
Fiction
Children’s Books
- Children’s Books (General)
- Ages 9-12
- Young Adult
Non-Fiction
You can sign up to receive one, some, or all; alternately you can just visit their site daily or follow them on facebook and twitter. I chose Free & Bargain Books plus the Pixel of Ink Young Edition. If you receive notice about something else that looks great from a different list, be sure to share it on my new blog domain as of tomorrow: www.practicallyparadise.org
Libraries are all about sharing and I don’t mind paying for a good book if you recommend it.
