Book Addiction

Anyone who knows me knows I have a book addiction. I will read almost anything. I couldn't even tell you how many books I have because the majority of them have been packed away in storage for the past 10 years. Still, in the 3 years of living with my parents, I've managed to accumulate about 200 more books. With the thought of having to eventually pack up and move all my books making him cringe, my wonderful husband gave me a Kindle for Christmas. I love my Kindle, I really do. I love the fact that I can have hundreds of books on one device that happens to be smaller than most hard cover books. I also love the fact that it accumulates far less dust than the books do! For someone that hates looking at clutter and is highly allergic to dust, the Kindle is ideal. Additionally, I've already replaced about 65+ of my classics (L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, James Joyce, Edgar Allen Poe, the Brontes, Jane Austin, etc) with the ebook for free, courtesy of Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page). Actually, I even managed to find a few new books by above authors that I've never seen in print. So the Kindle has worked out nicely. I've also found a few new authors courtesy of free ebook sites. I've also found a few authors that were horrible, but hey, their books were free, so I'm not going to complain! Now all I have to do is go through my books in storage and find the classics so I can donate them to the library sale (most of them have been read so many times that they are beyond dog-eared and not worth the library keeping). I should probably also get rid of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and Beverly Cleary books that are dusty and musty. That will be another 100 books to donate.

One thing I don't like about the Kindle is the book suggestions that are generated by Amazon. Basically, I've used my Amazon account to purchase a LOT of gifts and text books over the years. It took me a full day to go through and mark things "purchased as a gift, do not use for recommendations." Even though I wasted a whole day doing this, I still get recommendations based on things I've purchased (hence the wasted day!). Like recommendations for "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lachs." We covered the story of Henrietta Lachs in tissue culture class and again in Bio-Ethics. I can't imagine that the book covers the story in any greater detail than we did in class, where we endlessly debated the policies in place when the HeLa cell line was created. I can't for the life of me figure out why, without my text books in the picture, this book is recommended for me. When I click on the "Why is this book recommended to me" box, I get ever-changing replies based on the science fiction books I've ordered over the years. I finally gave up and checked the "not interested box."

Anyone got any book recommendations or free ebook sites to recommend?