Kindle books

Hi all,

I never know what to buy my brother for his birthday or Christmas, but this year, I think I've actually come up with what I think is a good idea for him and am going to buy him a Kindle

I know he takes books on holiday with him and also to work, so I think and hope he'll appreciate his sister buying him a decent present for once

I can only afford the Kindle with WiFi, which he hasn't got, but he can download books via mine or my Mum's wi fi when he needs to.

I'd like to put some on the Kindle ready for him, but I've never taken much notice of what books he reads.

I know he's read the Harry Potter books and he read the Da Vinci code, but that's about all I know.
I do know he's not into Horror books/stories.

I'd like to download some books onto the Kindle for him, when I buy it, but would like some recommendations as to what a soon to be 38 year old male may enjoy reading/looking at? (Besides porn)

Any suggestions would be appreciated (especially if they are free downloads)

Thanks

Porn.
And maybe ..............no just porn.

I'll recommend anything *other* than the kindle, simply because the kindle is so tightly bound to Amazon; it doesn't play well with books bought or acquired elsewhere. My preference is for the Kobo Touch (which I may supplement shortly by the Kobo Glo for the illumination).

Free books can be obtained from many places - chief among the legal sources are Gutenberg which will offer you the classics but little after 1950 - but a search for 'free epub' will point you at plenty of others.

After consultation with a number of authors I have had no objections raised to my policy: if I already own the book in paper format, I am happy to either locate a pirate copy or to scan, OCR, and proof it myself. Many of the pirate copies are poorly scanned and proofed, though, oddly, so are many of the legitimate copies: most recently, the ebook of Rowling's latest was withdrawn due to the number of errors...

As an example: I found this yesterday while searching for half a dozen books (which I have in paper form): http://mobilism.org/viewtopic.php?t=201244

EDITED TO SAY NSFW in some browsers.

You could put The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo on. If he likes it, there are two others in the trilogy...

Very difficult to recommend books for anyone, so why not buy an Amazon gift voucher which will allow him to choose his own?

I've got a Kindle and love it, although I only normally use it on holiday. Some Kindle books can be significantly cheaper than the paperback equivalent, some are little difference. There are daily free books available, and other books significantly reduced for short periods of time, so worth keeping an eye on that.

I also find that I have been able to buy books about the Vietnam War which aren't available on paperback.

As I have no interest in scanning books myself, the Kindle meets my needs. One of which is a very significant reduction in luggage weight for a 2 week holiday!

I will temper my enthusiasm by admitting to being a staunch Amazonophile!

Create a Family Kindle account. This will be a separate amazon account purely for his and anyone else who gets a Kindle. This way when you buy a book it can be shared by all other Kindles linked to that account. This also means that you could access this account and buy him books. Everyone can also read Kindle books in this account on their iphone/smartphone and PC.

Otherwise one of the problems with Kindles is that you cannot buy books for others or share your books once read.

You can get plenty of Free books and although I agree in part with Neil the Kindle Amazon link works so well it is a pleasure to use.

Oh my - where to start!?

http://www.oddee.com/_media/imgs/contrib/c8807.jpg

http://www.oddee.com/_media/imgs/articles/a251_t11.jpg

http://www.oddee.com/_media/imgs/articles/a251_t3.jpg

Should I go on?

[Strange how these links only work intermittently.]

I'm only seeing boxes?

Believe me, you don't *want* to see those images...

Thanks everyone

It's payday for me today, so bought the Kindle online before logging in here.

I think I will just get Amazon gift vouchers, it will be easier, thanks RK.

I think the Kindle will meet my brother's needs, as he usually only takes a book to work or on holiday, so will save on luggage space and weight and he often cycles to work, so it'll save him some weight in his rucksack too.

Thanks bockers, but we wouldn't need a family account. This will be the only Kindle in the family I think.

My Mum wouldn't know how to use one My daughter prefers real books and so do I.

My brother is the only one who I think would make use of a Kindle.

I like gadgets, etc, but really have no desire to own any sort of e book reader.

Warning, for some reason Neils link pointed me to some rather unpleasant viewing which are not safe for work in anyway

It wasn't Neil's link Mark, he was merely saying that the blank boxes lead to some images that were not what you really want to see.

They are hardly "not safe for work though", just 3 book covers about poo, a rather peculiar fantasy and lesbians and horses.

All of which are available from Amazon on Kindle.

?? Mark? My link was to a forum with a load of epubs of Tom Clancy books. If something else popped up, I apologise: I generally run without enabling scripts and with adverts blocked. Perhaps something from that?

There's a nice free program called Calibre which is a great program manager for all your books and this is able to very simply add ANY books to a kindle without any hassle whatsoever --- each kindle also has it's own email address and you can also email any books to the address.

Note, sometimes you may need to convert the book format and calibre does this quickly and simply for you as well. I've had a kindle for about 2 years now and never had any problems loading up any book that I wanted to. Perfect gift, i've given them to all my siblings and both parents over the last few years.

Calibre +1. I wouldn't be without it.

Yep, me too. It's clean on my computer but I did have a look at the forum on my mobile a bit ago and, after briefly showing the Tom Clancy books, a list of photographs of young ladies who are apparently "up for it" pops up.

A NSFW disclaimer is in order.

Not sure why that wasn't working. Changed it to links now.

They give me 404 errors Mr E.

They give me 404 errors Mr E.

Say again.

I still get only the Amazon pages for those books, nothing untoward at all.

Not even any Tom Clancy links.

Me too, until they have been viewed once. To get there you have to paste the URL into the browser's address bar. After you've done that once, the links start working.

I can now see just the third one, looks like a cracking read.

Very curious: I think the page is detecting the browser you're using. I just tried again with scripts on and ad-blocker off, and again just got the Clancy books. I'm using firefox under Linux Mint/Cinnamon.

Edit - works fine with W2k in a virtual machine, too.

I am using IE 9.

Not sure what browser this is on my phone but the ads pop up on whatever android ics uses. They also pop up on my pc with Firefox under Win7 if I don't have any blocks on. I haven't tried under Mint or Ubuntu which are my other two options.

My Firefox 16.0.2 on Unbuntu does show the NSFW links FWIW.

Edited to add
Ditto for Mint on same Firefox version.