While I may not be much of a writer, I definitely do enjoy reading quite a bit.
My preferred genre is primarily fantasy (knights, dragons, magic etc) but also read a good bit of future/space SciFi as well. I am currently a little past halfway through A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five.
I no longer read physical books. I have bad habit of collecting things, and books are no exception. When the original Barnes & Noble Nook came out, I was one of the first to buy it. A great device, easy to read with decent battery life, and TINY compared to shelves of physical books. Nowadays I tend to read on my phone (Galaxy Note II). When I first started using my phone, I went with the Barnes & Noble Nook App, but they messed up my color scheme and I couldn't use it anymore. It has since been fixed but I had already moved on.
Moon+ Reader for Android is my current (and likely permanent) book reader app. I have tried a number of others, but this one was the first to do what I needed, and have not had any reason to look elsewhere since. It has a free version, but I did pay for it at some point. The Pro version is normally $4.99, but is currently on sale for half off till the end of August. The single most useful feature that I use is the dropbox/google drive integration. This allows me to maintain my eBook library on one of these online services, then download whatever book I want to my phone. The online connection also allows Moon+ Reader to sync your reading position between multiple devices. Read a few chapters on your phone at work, then at night pick up your tablet and continue right where you left off. Love it.
So I mentioned that I originally did my reading with a Nook and the Nook App. This would suggest that I purchased my digital books from Barnes & Noble. This was true, in the beginning. I now buy eBooks wherever they happen to be cheapest, B&N, Amazon, Google, anywhere. If you know much about digital media, you may ask, "how do you read Amazon books without using Amazon's app or Kindle?" It's not super difficult, but does require some effort. This is due to the DRM (Digital Rights Management) on these ebooks to prevent people from sharing/reselling them.
There are ways to remove this DRM. This is technically against the terms and conditions of most (if not all) digital retailers. So long as you are not giving away and especially not reselling any of these eBooks, you should be fine (this is not legal advice, I am not a lawyer).
To start, you will need the free and open source Calibre eBook Management software. It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You will then want to visit Apprentice Alf's Blog for the additional materials and instructions for removing eBook DRM.
Now that you have a way to remove DRM from most eBooks, how do you find the cheapest place to buy them? Luzme. You enter the book/author/series into the search box, and it will give you the best price it can find from the top eBook retailers. I have only used it a few times, and the prices are not always up-to-date, but its still a helpful tool and gives you the link to the book on each of the retailer websites.
That's it for now, here is a list of some of my favorite series'.
- The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan
- The Sword of Truth, Terry Goodkind
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
- Ender Saga, Orson Scott Card
- Inheritance Cycle, Christopher Paolini