My Book Haul - Surprise Kindle!

My new kindle sitting in it's box

Last week it was my birthday and as it was round number (no, I’m not saying!), some of my lovely friends grouped together and bought me a Kindle!! It arrived all wrapped up and unannounced in the post yesterday – I have to say there’s a lot of packaging for what it is really a light-weight and small product. I got so excited when I saw what it was and rushed off to charge it up and start browsing the kindle store. As a result I’ve downloaded a number of free books –

Dracula by Bram Stoker – I’ve read this before and love it. It’s always a good book to have and I’ve been thinking about re-reading it recently.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Irvine Washington – one of those classics I’ve always wanted to try but have never got round to.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley – can you see a theme developing? Again another book I’ve never read. Between these three I might have a Gothic horror themed week at some point!

The Brother Grimm Fairy Stories – I’ve been a bit of fairy tale hunt recently (as you can see from my wishlist last week!) and I don’t think I’ve ever read the original versions of them. I understand they are quite gory – so another book downloaded.

A New World by Patrick Ness – This is a prequel to his excellent Chaos Walking trilogy based on Viola before she reaches the planet. A friend had sent me this before as it’s free (or at least was!) on Patrick Ness’s website but I never got round to reading it. I saw it on the free section of site and thought I’m having that!

  

 The final book I downloaded last night wasn’t a free one but it was heavily reduced so I splashed on Fallen by Lauren Kate. I’ve heard a lot about this series on the blogosphere in the last month – especially with the sequel just released so another one to try.

I’d been toying with the idea of getting one for a while – there are some great books now available and of course the kindle books are cheaper than the paper one – I think my bank manager might appreciate the saving, especially as I haven’t had to fork out on the initial cost of the system! I haven’t started reading anything yet – I rarely have more than one book on the go so I‘m just waiting to finish my current read before I get to take my kindle on a test read.

So now I’m a new kindle owner, is there anything I should know about it? What did you wish you knew about the kindle when you first got it? What’s the best – or worse about it? I can already see getting hold of books within 60 seconds can be dangerous for impulse shopping!