I read all the time — but I almost never buy books at full price. There's no need to, when you know the secrets of getting books for free or on the cheap. Read our 9 strategies for getting free and cheap books and see how many of these penny-pinching tricks are new to you. If you've got your own thrifty secrets that we didn't cover, tell us about it in the comments!
Nine times out of ten, if I'm saying "books" and "Amazon" in the same sentence, I'm talking about the kind with free super saver shipping. But this time, I just finished a double header of books about the Amazon jungle — and the horrors I encountered therein have convinced me to keep my ass planted firmly on the couch for the remainder of my sedentary but not-eaten-by-crocodiles life. First I read Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, in which a team of research scientists studying a native tribe's miracle fertility drug disappears into the jungle for months, then years. The pharmaceutical [...]
File that under “sentences I never thought I would type.” Last weekend I went to the King Tut exhibit (currently at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center). Whether it was worth $32 is a debate for another time, but I had an extra reason for being curious about the Egyptian jewelry and artifacts. In Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey, I learned that back in 1922, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon — whose castle, Highclere, is the estate better known as “Downton Abbey” — funded Howard Carter’s archaeological expedition that unearthed King Tut’s tomb. The Egypt-crazed and cash-poor earl could afford [...]