Any short book recommendations?

[missleung]

Hi,

 

Does anyone have any books/reading that I can read for free? Short books are recommended, and anything that I can read in my cozy snuggie under the Christmas tree . I do have Amazon Kindle app installed on my phone, so ebooks are cool too!

 

Lisa

[vodkafan]

The short book that springs to mind is Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith. I haven't checked if it's on kindle but it if its I doubt it will be free 

[mirandashell]

Errmmmmm... as a writer myself, I'm not keen on you asking for free books.......   TBH.  

[chesilbeach]

Not sure where you live, but have you tried your library?  Lots of libraries now offer ebook loans, and you'll have a wide range of books to choose from, and I know in the UK, authors still get paid a small amount of money by the libraries under the Public Lending Rights scheme

 

Other than that, in the UK, you can look at the Amazon best sellers chart which is divided between paid and free books, so you can see the top 100 free Kindle books at the time, which will give you an idea about which books are popular, and browse what you might like.

[missleung]

Errmmmmm... as a writer myself, I'm not keen on you asking for free books.......   TBH.  

Oh yeah, that's true. I've been buying 3 dollar books on amazon kindle. I guess I meant "cheap" books lol.

[mirandashell]

 

Fair enough.  But I do second the library recommendation.

 

[Lara]

It's pretty easy to find the classics for cheap online! If you haven't read it, I'd recommend The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's a great story even if you usually aren't into the classics. Same goes for To Kill a Mockingbird. If you are into philosophy or history at all, I love Candide by Voltaire. It's very short. I'm not sure if you can get it online, but I got it at Barnes & Nobles for a few dollars. For some light/easy fiction, I'd recommend John Greene and maybe some other YA authors. I read 13 Reasons Why as a pdf online for free. It should come up if you google search it. That book is a little heavy emotionally, but it's not too long. I'm pretty sure I read it in two days. If you like non-fiction, Malcolm Gladwell's books are pretty short reads, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is really interesting and not too long. 

[Lara]

Errmmmmm... as a writer myself, I'm not keen on you asking for free books.......   TBH.  

 

To be fair, there's plenty of books you can find free online because they are in the public domain. For example, if the author is dead and the copyright runs out. There's nothing wrong with that; it doesn't harm the author. 

[davidh219]

The following are all generally classified as novellas (a short novel), and all old enough that you should be able to find them for free online due to public domain laws. I'm fairly certain not ALL of these are technically public domain yet, but they're still all old enough that the author is dead and nobody cares enough to enforce the copyright if it still exists. I listened to most of these as audibooks on youtube. 

• The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway
• The Man Who Would be King by Kipling
• The Metamorphosis by Kafka
• Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• The Pearl by Steinbeck 
• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
• Of Mice and Men
• Flowers for Algernon
• The Call of the Wild

You can check out project gutenburg for public domain e-books and librivox for public domain audiobooks. There are certainly more old, famous novellas I haven't listed, but that's because I haven't read them.