this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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Science Fiction

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Lemmy World Rules

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Have any of you found Kindle unlimited worth it for science fiction? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world
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In the last few months I've read:

  • Project Hail Mary, Weir
  • Fall, Stephenson
  • The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Gaiman
  • The Ultimate Earth, Williamson
  • The first four Discworld books, Pratchett
  • Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge, Resnick
  • A Memory Called Empire, Martine
  • A Desolation Called Peace, Martine
  • The first five Murderbot Diaries books, Wells
  • The Imperial Radch trilogy, Leckie
  • Annihilation, Vandermeer
  • The Kingston Cycle trilogy, Polk

For comparison, I think I read two or three books last year. It's starting to be a non-trivial amount of money, even though they've all been the ebook versions, which are generally a little cheaper. Has anyone who reads a lot of SF found Kindle Unlimited to be worth the price?

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[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thanks! It did occur to me that KU is like a library, do maybe I should check mine. I'm in Los Angeles county, so I looked at the LA county library page. They have a lot of good titles, but everything in interested in reading at the moment has a long wait list. I'm not sure if there are better library options available to me.

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I usually just look for what’s available now and start reading. Found a few good titles unexpectedly that way.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did that for a while decades ago, and ended up reading a lot of stuff I thought was pretty crappy. Then I became friends with a coworker who was also a reviewer for Locus Magazine, and he started helping me pick his to read. The difference in my reading enjoyment was exponential. So now I'm more particularly, and pay a lot of attention to things like Hugo and Nebula award nominees.

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh our library in Seattle has a service like that! You can list books you like, and the librarians will provide a human-picked list of suggestions.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh, that's a nice service as long as the people know their stuff more than "Well this is the same genre..."

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

From what I’ve heard, they’re very good. They even write a short description of why they selected each book.

[–] Stormeggeddon@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just wanting to echo the suggestion for linking the kindle to the library. It took a while but basically I just did a massive number of books I was partially interested in (>25) and got on the waitlist. If you then don't have time you can always defer and set the number of days to defer by (e.g. just a couple) but after only a month or so of reading new books I've had constant opportunities to read big name books over the year. There is also sometimes a special "skip the line" copy which can give you a bonus week reading early!