free Rome books for kindle?

[caesar novus]

I saw an extremely cheap deal on amazon for their almost 10" non-color kindle so that I can read e-books even in bright daylight. I guess it is cheap due to no touch screen and clunky outdated firmware... perfect for the frugal! Also it runs on free(ish) 3g only, so can still run if no wifi.

 

If I search on amazon for "Roman" kindle books and sort by low price, there is quite a number for free... any recommendations, since they aren't obviously winners? They do have a history->ancent->rome section with good looking mostly 99 cent books. I take it I can also load most any .pdf (or better yet .mobi?) such as from free archive.org and sometimes it will even convert it to spoken word.

[caesar novus]

Ok, sort of a note to myself. I recalled manybooks.net having more free books out of copyright, and indeed it seems to offer .mobi and .azw which apparently is kindle compatible (send to it via usb cable rather than 3g). There are probably other sources too (gutenberg.whatever), all of which I need to experiment on before investing real bucks into newfangled "books in the cloud".

Edited December 2, 2013 by caesar novus

[Virgil61]

Yeah that's the Kindle DX with a great price I see. Mine is packed with pdf files. The Paperwhite is useless in that respect & it's easier to read them on the DX than the ipad I think (except of course for the lighting). I'd love it if they'd come out with a Paperwhite-like DX reader.

 

The Academia forum has tons of sources pinned, many are in epub (easy to convert to mobi) or pdf formats. Between Gutenberg.org, googlebooks, archive.org & Amazon's free offerings you'll be stocked full of reading for quite a long time. Most of the Rome related stuff is pre-1920 where the copyrights have expired. Some of it is outstanding, the MacDevitt translation of Caesar's "Commentaries" & Crawley's of Thucydides come to mind.

 

I have a lot of ebooks but still find it difficult to pry myself away from hard copy reading.

Edited December 2, 2013 by Virgil61

[Onasander]

I'm actually in the process of translating a work from Medieval Latin into English for kindle.

There are alot of books, almost all, you can download free samples of.

 

I have several hundred downloaded, the ones on Rome:

 

1) Soma's Dictionary of Latin Quotations and Phrases

2) SPQR Study Guide Latin Frequency Dictionary

3) Inflected Digital Latin Dictionary

4) Doderlein's Handbook of Latin Synonymes

4) The Last Pagans of Rome

5)Unrivaled Influence: Women and Empire in Byzantium

6)Margins and Metropolis: Authority Across the Byzantine Empire

7) The Prince of Medicine: Galen in the Roman Empire

8) The Seven Deadly Sins: Their Origin in the Spiritual Teachings of Evagrius the Hermit

9)Readings from Latin Verse with Notes

10) The Book of Memory: A Study of Medieval Culture

11) Francis Yates and the Hermetic Tradition

12) The Art of Memory

13)SPQR Study Guide 'The Aeneid' Line by Line

14) The Oxford Book of Latin Verse

15) Latin English Lexicon

16)Helps to Latin Translation at Sight

17) New Latin Grammar

18) Kiss My Relics: Hermaphroditic Fictions of the Middle Ages

19) Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin

20) The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite

21) Seneca: Dialogue and Essays

22) Ante-Nicene Fathers (multiple volumns of it)

23)Belisarius: The Last Roman General

24) Michael Psellos: Rhetoric and Authorship in Byzantium

25)Eusebius of Caesarea: Ecclesiastical History

26) The Cambridge Medieval History "The Eastern Roman Empire 717-1453"

27)Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (multiple volumns)

28) A Companion to Petronius

29) Polybius: The Histories

30) Juvenile: The Sixteen Satires

31) Petronius 'The Satyricon/ Seneca 'The Apocolocyniosis

32) The Greek and Roman Novel

33) Erotica: Satyricon, Kisses of Johannes Secundus, Love Epistles of Aristaenetus

34)Stoic Virtues: Chrysippus and the Religious Character of Stoic Ethics

35) Dialogue with Trypho

36) The Temple of Solomon the King

37) Sepher Yetzirah

38) Sepher Yetzirah: In Theory and Practice

39) Sepher Yetzirah (yet another)

40) Sepher Yetzirah (a fucking other one)

41) Plutarch: Isis and Osiris

42) Classical Cynicism: A Critical Study

43) The Cynic Philosophers from Diogenes to Julian

44) The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy

45) Stoic Pragmatism

46)Turning Points (Decisive Moments in the history of christianity.

47) The Origins of the Christian Mythical Tradition

48) Porphyry's Against the Christians

49) Plotinius

50) Ancient Epistemology

51) The Gnostics

52) Origen: Scholarship in the Service of the Church

53) Origen: Homilies 1-14 on Ezekiel

54) John Cassian 'The Conferences

55) Evagrius Ponticus 'Ad Monachos

56) The Wisdom of the Desert

57) The Desert Fathers

58) Evagrius Ponticus

59) Evagrius of Pontus Talking Back

60) Rome and the Arabs before the Rise of Islam

61) Leo the Wise

62) The Byzantine Economy

63) John Skylitzes 'A Synopsis of Byzantine History 811-1057

64)The Trivium 'The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric

65) Plotinius 'The Enneads

66)Titus Lucius Carus 'The Nature of Things

67) Plotinus

68)Return to the One 'Plotinus Guide to God Realization

69) Pholosophy and Theurgy in late antiquity

70)Julian's Gods

71) Musonius Rufus

72) Livy History of Rome Books 1-8

73)Ancient Rome: From the earliest of Times to 476AD

74)Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

75)Boetheus Theological Tractates

76) The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy

77) Saint Athanasius The Father of Orthodoxy

78) God and the Existence of Evil John Chrysostom

79)An Archeology of Duty Pus Dei

80) Procopius The Secret Histories The Wars of Justinian

81) The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession

82) Flavius Aetius 'The Last Conqueror

83) The Auxiliary Of The Roman Imperial Army

84) The Tyrants of Syracus

85) Stilicho The Vandal Who Saved Rome

86) Arnth

87) City 'A Story of Roman Planning and Construction

88) Theories of the World from Antiquity to the Copernican Revolution

89) Pyrrhonism 'How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism

90) De Amicitia, Scipio's Dreams

91) Treatise on Friendship and old age

92) Life of Cicero Vol. 2

93) The Letters of Cicero Vol. 1

94-102) Bunch of books on Cicero and Plutarch

103)Simon Magus

104) A Guide to Stoicism

105) Sextus Empericus and Greek Skepticism

106) The Golden Sayings of Epictetus

107)An Essay on the Beautiful (plotinus)

108.... lots and lots of crap on plato and aristotle

[Onasander]

Wait until after christmas, and get a kindle fire. The older Kindle is a joke.

 

Also, dont buy a nook.

Most of my good stuff are PDFs.

If you get a kindle fire, you can get videos, apps, games, music, etc. I moved my translation work from the computer to my kindle.

 

You can download the kindle app to most any device.

 

Honestly, dont get the old black and white kindle.... its a joke. I bough this kindle fire a month ago for a little over a hundred, its the demo one in Radioshack.

The Nook I had in Hawaii had better specs, a handful of good books, but was worthless.

Edited December 2, 2013 by Onasander

[Onasander]

Also, if you have a kindle fire, you can download Overdrive.

 

A Overdrive One account allows you to download library books from the Amazon.com store for free. All you need is a library card from a state that participates in this. I downloaded a bunch of free history audiobooks off amazon.com for free, just needed my library card. So long as a library in my state carried it, I could download it.

 

Finnegans Wake sucked balls, dont download that.

[caesar novus]

I'd love it if they'd come out with a Paperwhite-like DX reader.

 

The Academia forum has tons of sources pinned, many are in epub (easy to convert to mobi) or pdf formats.

.

Maybe this sale indicates they are clearing out stock for an improved DX, although today they have extended the huge price cuts to some fire models. I can't find any academia forum, unless you mean the Brazilian one. Oh goodie, I have lots of .epub and .pdf available. Strange how amazon isn't giving me any delivery date on the DX after a full day, yet they are working on 30 minute deliveries by drone:.

.

[Virgil61]

 

I'd love it if they'd come out with a Paperwhite-like DX reader.

 

The Academia forum has tons of sources pinned, many are in epub (easy to convert to mobi) or pdf formats.

.

Maybe this sale indicates they are clearing out stock for an improved DX, although today they have extended the huge price cuts to some fire models. I can't find any academia forum, unless you mean the Brazilian one. Oh goodie, I have lots of .epub and .pdf available. Strange how amazon isn't giving me any delivery date on the DX after a full day, yet they are working on 30 minute deliveries by drone:.

 

I meant the Acadamia forum on UNRV - http://www.unrv.com/forum/forum/56-academia/ . PP pinned the "Ancient Sources" post.

 

I have a 7" Kindle Fire & an ipad 2, while they're both fine for reading ebooks and all I think the DX and Paperwhite 'read' better for my eyes. The fatigue factor is a lot less then reading from an ipad, it has something to do with how the e-ink renders on screen apparently.

 

The readers are also great because they're devoid of distractions like the internet or apps, and that's no small thing I think.

 

Amazon is wild. Anything in their Seattle area warehouses come to me within a couple of days, other things take a lot longer. I have Amazon Prime which is worth the $75 a year for as much as I buy from them.

Edited December 2, 2013 by Virgil61

[Onasander]

How does the Amazon Prime work when it comes to "Streaming"..... I get internet on my phone, but not at home..... I can download stuff pretty fast at work (checking this out after the gym, job sucks but it has a few perks).

 

Will Amazon Prime allow me to download those movies and tv shows for free, or is it only streaming?

 

Secondly, what is the price cap on your free book downloads? Can I download three hundred dollar specialist history books for free?

[Virgil61]

How does the Amazon Prime work when it comes to "Streaming"..... I get internet on my phone, but not at home..... I can download stuff pretty fast at work (checking this out after the gym, job sucks but it has a few perks).

 

Will Amazon Prime allow me to download those movies and tv shows for free, or is it only streaming?

 

Secondly, what is the price cap on your free book downloads? Can I download three hundred dollar specialist history books for free?

 

As far as I know it's only streaming although there's some software out there if you look that'll copy streaming vids. I watch it through my Panasonic Viseo which has wifi & comes with Amazon streaming. I only used their book borrowing thingy once just to check it out, I've got more than enough to handle without it & I think the selection is limited.

[Number Six]

archive.org has some good stuff from early 20th century.

 

But how is Kindle with PDF files? I mean, I tried to read some PDF on my Kobo Aura and I decided I'll just read PDF from my computer.

[Virgil61]

archive.org has some good stuff from early 20th century.

 

But how is Kindle with PDF files? I mean, I tried to read some PDF on my Kobo Aura and I decided I'll just read PDF from my computer.

 

Some older works are getting a second life due to archive, googlebooks, gutenburg hosting pre-1920s historical writing. Like I said earlier the MacDevitte translation of Caesar was very good as was T. Rice Holmes' narrative of the same.

 

I read those on the ipad but if I'd had the older Kindle DX at the time I would have preferred it. The Kindle DX does fine reading pdfs, the 9.7" screen is almost an inch larger than the ipad's & that really helps.

[Onasander]

I can read them just fine on my kindle 7 inch. Just annoying I have to go into the web browser, then downloads, then stream down a list. I have a bunch, cant always tell the difference from the PDF file title.

 

I can enlarge the screen as much as I want, size isnt a issue.

[Onasander]

I should also point out, the kindle app store is Android. A Kindle gift card works on items in their store, but not other android apps, however, kindle doesnt stop you from downloading them.

 

The old 7 inch kindle fire is good enough to play games like Shogun Total War, watch TV shows like Sparticus, listen to music, read PDFs, buy books (or get them for free), and write with.

 

In my case, I am able to just fine manage to translate a medieval latin text. I have my dictionaries, both paid, free, and PDF, and can jump back and forth in the word program (the one that keeps translating Cum into Fun) without loosing my place. If I have a grip, its the battery life.

 

Plus, I can check the web. The work I am translating covers all aspects of Roman and Greek history, so I go online when I get stuck.

 

Its a fantastic tool.

[caesar novus]

The Kindle DX does fine reading pdfs, the 9.7" screen is almost an inch larger than the ipad's & that really helps.

.

I need pretty big fonts and still may have to view pdfs by the half page if the DX sharpness doesn't make up for it. Amzn still haven't shipped or given me a DX delivery date after several days, yet they are now airmailing 3 gallons of something I hardly need at no extra cost!

 

I love big screens... you should see pdf on my 13" laptop folded into tablet mode and rotated to portrait... luxury! But all my laptops have died due to screen failures, and I don't want to burn extra hours e-reading on them. Same for an 11.5 inch android tablet I ordered from China... pdf looks marginally good, but all my bargain tablets develop touch problems in midlife, so I don't want to kill big, more expensive ones early just staring at books.

 

One solution is to convert pdf to epub or whatever (losing a bit in translation) then reading on a smaller device which is cheap enough to bear the earlier screen failure. I don't like it too small so I am paging every few seconds.

 

But the DX has a large-ish screen at a cheap, expendable price. Not only is it extra sharp but can work in bright outside light, which I want. My wifi router security setup is maxed out with device count, but the DX can use free 3G. Ahh, the anticipation is always greater than the reality.