Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Free Kindle Tech Books (And Other Genres)

I have a Kindle Fire. It's been a good little tool, and I have to admit, I've used it more than I imagined I would. From being my "thou shalt not copy and paste" window to being my place to go and play with a handful of walled-garden apps (yes, I could break it and load Jelly Bean or something else on it, but frankly, I'm OK with it being a Semi- Android E-Reader for the time being). Also, let me make a note that, right now, this is a standard Kindle Fire, not the HD. I may upgrade in the future, but for now, again, it meets my needs.

What I wanted to do was start looking to see what was available for the Fire and, more importantly, see what I could find for free. Since a lot of my focus is on tech books at the moment, I decided to see what I could find in that avenue, and that led me to the Free Kindle Books and Tips Site. More importantly, it led me to this particular page:

Free Kindle Books and Tips: Free Book LinksMany of these areas are of semi interest to me. Truth be told, I'm not much of a fiction reader. Given a choice, I much prefer reading non-fiction, especially stuff that centers around world history, science, exploration, world cultures and philosophy. Computers and Internet are a sort of essential grab bag for me, so that's where I look most frequently.

Yeah, I know, when you see "Free", very often the response is that "you get what you pay for". This is somewhat true in that a lot of the titles are, well, of questionable quality or are older, but some of the titles I've found have proven to be worthwhile and somewhat interesting. Right now, these are a few I have read or am reading (if there are links, it means that, as of this writing, they were still listed as available for free):

The Past, Present and Future of JavaScript

jQuery: Just the Basics

CSS and Documents

What is Node?

What is HTML5?

Most of these titles are short, like in the neighborhood of 32 pages or so. The jQuery books is full length, and so far, looks to be a useful title. Again, the listings will likely change week to week, and again, some of them are worth what you pay for them, but if you want to get your hands on some quick and potentially interesting reading (not to mention FREE), then this might be a good service to bookmark.

1 comment:

John Stevenson said...

Hi Michael

Glad you are enjoying your kindle, love mine and find I am now reading a lot more than I use to.

For your information I was sent this link awhile ago on FREE books and thought you might find it useful.

http://qink.net/page/The-Ultimate-List-of-Freely-Available-Programming-Books.aspx