It’s been too hot here the last few days for me to think creatively or even do a lot of reading. (My poor old wall unit AC is barely keeping things livable after today’s high of 105F — and that was not a “dry heat.”) Therefore I decided I’d take this opportunity for a quick post on one of my favorite things about owning a Kindle or any other e-reader: free books.

Frankly, a lot of the free e-books out there are pretty much priced in accordance with their worth. But there are still a lot of them available that are not only worth a look, but would be worth paying for. My current go-to site for keeping an eye out for these discount gems is Pixel of Ink. Sharon does an amazing job of culling the worthwhile free and cheap Kindle e-books from the dross. I subscribe to her RSS feed, and get numerous recommendations every day. Mind you, many are not of any interest to me since they cover all genres, but you’re bound to find something worth a look every week, if not more often.

Being a sci-fi/fantasy fan, another favorite source of freebies is the Baen Free Library, a selection of titles from Baen Books’ extensive library. Most of the free offerings are either older titles, or first (and sometimes also second) books in a series, presumably with the idea of getting you hooked, so you’ll buy the succeeding books. They currently have about 120 titles, which you can find by author or title. When I first found the Baen site, it used HTML frames, which made it unusable on the Kindle’s web browser. Fortunately they joined the 21st century earlier this year and updated the site to run without frames. It is still not terribly Kindle-friendly, but at least you can now download their free books directly onto your Kindle via the site, though I generally do it from my PC, as it is much easier to navigate the pages that way.

Okay, time to empty another tray of ice cubes into a glass of tea. I can’t wait for that cold front to come through here on Sunday, when the high temperature will “only” be 90.