Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Using Free Kindle Books for High School Literature Classics


Dear friends,

Product DetailsI am learning to love Kindle for high school literature.  So far my son and I have read parts of the Iliad and more than half of Frankenstein.

No, I don't own a Kindle, but we do have a desktop computer, laptops, and two iPods.  You can get the Kindle apps free for any of these, as well as many other devices.  I don't know if you can do the same thing with a Nook or other e-reader.

My Top 10 Reasons for Reading High School Lit with Kindle
  1. You can get a huge selection of classic literature absolutely free.  Others are very inexpensive -- just a dollar or two.
  2. You can read wherever you go if you have a small enough device.  All of these books in one place!
  3. You don't need a bookcase for these books.
  4. Parent and student can read together on different devices.  As long as both devices use the same Kindle account, it should be easily available to both.  And if you paid for it once, you can read it off of multiple devices using the same account.
  5. You can adjust the font size, style, columns, color and background color to make it easy on your eyes.
  6. The device keeps track of where you left off.  Or you can hit the bookmark button to mark you spot.
  7. You can easily do a search on words that you need.  This is great if you have an assignment on a particular person or topic in the book!
  8. If you don't understand a word or phrase, you can highlight it and a definition will appear.  Or click on the More button and Google it.
  9. You can highlight good quotes that you want to remember.  Later, you can view all of your highlighted areas in one spot.
  10. If you will be answering literature questions or writing an essay based on the material, you can highlight areas that pertain to them, and then come back to them easily later on.  This cuts down on having to write things down as you go.  You can also take notes right in Kindle that will be linked to the relevant spot in the book.
I know there are other benefits to doing literature with Kindle, but for now I will leave you with a list of links free Kindle classics.  Please double check the free-ness of them before you order, just in case they decided to start charging for a certain title!  I'm sorry if any of these are in the wrong categories or if anything looks weird.  I don't have time to twiddle too much at the moment!

Please note that I have not read all of these books.  Use at your own discretion.  Some may have material that is unsuitable for your family.

If you find other free titles, please add them in the comment section!

British Literature


The War of the Worlds H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

World Literature

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
The Iliad by Homer

American Literature

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer's Comrade by Mark Twain 




Other related blog posts:

Web Sites for Free High School and College Level On-Line Learning



Have fun, folks!
Virginia Knowles

5 comments:

  1. Great tips here! Thank you for sharing and linking up at Simply Helping Him! I love the feel of a real book in my hands, so I'm not sure I'm ready for a Kindle yet, but love some of the options you listed as being available!

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  2. This is a great list of free books. I don't own a kindle either but have a couple books on my kindle account on my laptop and can read them there or on my phone while I am out. My daughter does online college and often reads online.

    Thanks for linking up over at WholeHearted Home this week. Your posts are always so informative and a blessing.

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  3. This is an awesome article, Virginia! Reposted it all over facebook :) :) ;)

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  4. Although I also LOVE the feel of a book, we use KINDLE books almost exclusively for one of our high school learners. GREAT primary source documents. Perhaps I will piggie back on this post, if time allows. Will be discussing this as part of the workshop I am doing at Books and Beyond: Making Use of FREE- The Library and Other FREE Stuff. Great post Virginia! Sparks much interest these days with money being tight.
    Cheryl Bastian
    www.cherylbastian.com

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  5. This blog is really impressive and a blessing too, because now I have a huge resource of history and culture eBooks to read in my free time on my new Kindle DX device.

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