Feed Your Book Addiction

My name is Ava, and I am addicted to books.  There, I said it.

It's all my mother's fault.  She started putting books in front of me to play with when I was could sit up as a baby, and she read to me every night until I was in grade school.  She did the same with my brothers, and we are all avid readers.

Even though I have purged books in the past, my husband and I still own quite a collection of books.  Last May when I went to California for my nephew's graduation, Robert decided to surprise me by making a book nook in our garage to hold our books.  As you can see from the photo below, he kinda misjudged whether they could all fit.  Most of the shelves are full and the boxes in front of the shelves are the remainder of our books!  "One day" I will go through the boxes again and see what I can part with.  Robert wanted me to tell y'all that he has plans of putting cabinet doors on the front, but that was a year ago when he built it.  I like the idea (that's the first I've heard him mention it) because it would keep the books from getting so dusty.  (Fortunately, I haven't had to dust them, because I can't even get to them!!)

Our Book Nook in the Garage

One reason why I am a book hoarder is because I have noticed a downward trend in book quality.  Twenty years ago (and maybe even 10 years ago), you could walk into a book store, find the young adult (teen) section, and find some decent stories.  Today, over 90% of the books are about witches, vampires, and other evil topics.  Now that I have a daughter, who I hope will be as much of a reader as I am, I am concerned about what will be available for her to read as she gets older.  Perhaps the library will still have good books, but I don't know how much we can depend on that.  So, when I find good quality books at yard sales or thrift stores, I will buy them.

Not only do I hoard books, but I hoard e-books as well.  To date, I have over 1,300 e-books on my Kindle app.  I have probably only paid for about 20 of them (and some of them by accident because I thought they were free, but they were not).

My E-books as of today.

I follow several blogs that feature free e-books.


Free Kindle Books and Tips is the blog I've been following the longest.  Michael lists free books (along with free apps for the Kindle Fire) several times a day.  His lists show a variety of books, many of which I am totally not interested in.  Now that I've found other blogs that list free e-books, I depend on it more for the list of nonfiction/reference books.



Inspired Reads (Christian Kindle Books on a Budget) lists Christian ebooks that are free or have been discounted.  I was really happy when I found out about this blog.  They post once per day and will list about three or four free books along with two or three discounted books.  If a book is one of a series, they will list all of the books in the series along with the links so that you can check to see if you have all of them.  The Gone to Green series, for example, have all been free at one time or another.

eReader Girl is a new blog authored by the Money Saving Mom.  Not only does she feature Christian fiction, but she also features various nonfiction books that are not necessarily Christian in nature, and free ebooks for children!









Christian eBooks Today is the latest blog that I follow.  Like the other blogs, they feature both Christian fiction and nonfiction.  Just a week or so ago, I started following all of these blogs by email rather than using Google Reader.  I had a difficult time finding the follow-by-email feature (down the sidebar on the right); when I tried it, it gave an error message.  I contacted them, and they fixed that problem.




Just recently, I have found some posts about free classics on the Contented at Home blog.  She has links for such authors as Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen.  I do not follow her blog right now, but I may follow her in the future.




I am hopeful that Amazon will be around for a good long time because I also hope to exchange many of my physical books for ebooks.  1,346 books on an iPad takes up a whole lot less space than my only-several-hundred books in my book nook!

Do you have any book blogs that you follow?