If you are an Amazon Prime member, you are entitled to two free Kindle ebooks per month from a selection of 9 popular bestselling books chosen by Amazon that month. This same program, called First Reads, also gives you access to free short stories and Audible readings for listening, commissioned as Amazon originals. I can usually find at least one book I am interested in each month, and since it is free, why not? —KK

A year or two ago I recommended Standard Ebooks as a resource for free reading. They have since updated their catalog with a lot of new titles, so I thought it was time to re-recommend them. They take public domain texts (by authors such as Robert E. Howard, Edith Wharton, Sarah Orne Jewett, Bertrand Russell), scour them for typographical errors, add excellent cover art, and format them for Kindle and other e-readers. The online catalog is a pleasure to browse, and includes a synopsis for each book. The latest entries include The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Time Traders by Andre Norton, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, A Tangled Tale by Lewis Carroll, The Marvelous Land of Oz by L Frank Baum, and Villette by Charlotte Brontë. Join the mailing list or subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on new books added to the catalog. — MF

Black Imagination is a collection of voices curated by conceptual artist Natasha Marin, who sought out Black individuals, including youth, LGBTQ+, incarcerated, and unsheltered people and asked them three questions: What is your origin story? How do you heal yourself? and Describe a world where you are loved, safe and valued. The result of which are these deeply moving testimonies/prose/dreams/poetry. This book has cracked my heart wide open and I’m honored to experience this literary space that expands beyond its bound pages. Here are three excerpts or three possible worlds from Black Imagination. — CD

I recently got a subscription to 12min, a library of condensed non-fiction books (audio and text). New titles are added all the time. I’ve found it especially useful to refresh my memory on books I read years ago, like Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled By Randomness, and Tim Ferriss’s Tools of Titans. A lifetime subscription to 12min is $39. — MF

Voracious adventure novel reader Josh Glenn put together a list of 250 of his favorite adventure novels of the 20th century, with a capsule review of each book. I’ve already added a bunch to my reading list. Many are available on project Gutenberg and other public domain book and audiobook websites. — MF

I  am a very happy user of You Need a Budget (YNAB), a personal finances subscription service (get a free month when you sign up with this link). They also have a good YouTube channel and I particularly enjoyed this episode where the host recommended five books that changed her life. Those books are: The 5 Second Rule, You Need a Budget, Daring Greatly, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind, and Getting Things Done.  — MF

I’ve had this book (Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chödrön) for years but find myself pulling it off the shelf more in the last month than ever before. You don’t need to be a meditation expert or Buddhist to appreciate the message. Each chapter is a short lesson in self-compassion and awareness, designed to make you comfortable with uncertainty. It is one of those books you can open to any page and find wisdom. There is a Kindle version, but I think it belongs in everyone’s library. — CD

Many folks dream of being self-sufficient on a half-acre homestead somewhere. The person I know who’s come closest to that goal is Lloyd Kahn, who has evolved a do-it-yourself lifestyle near a city that really works and is not a fantasy. He’s put his 46 years of building his own homes, foraging for wild foods, raising plants, traveling in a van, working from home, self-publishing, and all-around DIY into one photographic book. The Half-Acre Homestead is not how-to; it’s a visual demonstration of what an integrated handmade life looks like, for real. At 85 years young, Lloyd Kahn is still doing it! He is one of my heros. — KK

We have a weekly podcast where we ask remarkable people to rave about four of their favorite tools. We took the best shows and compiled them into a really cool book. Hundreds of unusual and fantastic tools are recommended. Paper copies are still available, but we can now offer a digital version  – especially useful to those outside of the US. It’s a PDF, in full color, with active links for all tools mentioned. And the 300-page book is only $1.99. Download Four Favorite Tools here. — KK

I recently read I Am Strange Loop, by Douglas Hoftstadter, which makes the argument that one’s sense of self is a mirage that arises out a cognitive feedback loop. I struggled with many parts of the book, but want to reread it because I believe Hoftstadter is onto something. In the meantime, I enjoyed Will Schroeder’s 20-minute video, called You Are A Strange Loop, which summarizes the book in an approachable way. — MF

Remember libraries, where content is free? Library Extension is a browser extension that will tell you whether a book you are looking at on an Amazon page is available in your local library. If it is you can click on the button to put a hold on the book, or find which branch has it. Very nicely done. Like libraries it’s free. Works on Chrome and Firefox. — KK

Kevin and Mark host a weekly podcast called Cool Tools. For more than 5 years now they have invited notable and creative people to talk about their favorite tools. This year, I took the transcripts from the best 150 episodes and pulled text, added images, and laid it all out in a 300-page book titled Four Favorite Tools. It is now available on Amazon in both color ($39.99) and B&W ($12.99) versions. Inside the book are hundreds and hundreds of recommendations for apps, gadgets, tools — but my recommendation is the book itself as a handbook for inspiration. — CD

I only recently learned that Amazon Prime subscribers (here’s a link for a free 30-day trial) are entitled to one free Kindle book a month. The program is called Amazon First Reads, and you can see the current selections here. — MF

I was happy to find in last week’s Anne Friedman Weekly a crowdsourced syllabus of media depicting mother/child relationships. Which is a favorite subject of mine to explore, because the more I understand my personal relationship with my mother, the better I understand myself. Some of the books were already on my wishlist so I just went ahead and bought them, but now I have a whole new list of things to watch and read. You can check out all the other recommendations that didn’t make the syllabus here in a public google sheet. — CD

Open Borders is a comic book written by an economist. It’s also a comic book about one of the most seriously radical ideas you may ever hear: that all countries, including the US, should have open borders, allowing anyone on the planet to live anywhere they want if they obey local laws. The book carefully runs through the reasons why this is good economically for countries like the US, counters all the obvious and non-obvious objections one by one, and then goes through compromises and partial solutions for those objections. All while keeping it light, fast, easy, fun, and crystal clear. While there are moral arguments, these are mostly economic arguments why open borders are a winner for all involved, especially the US. I am already giving copies of this book away. — KK

A red-hot area in science fiction these days is China. Like many fans who enjoyed The Three Body Problem, I wanted more. So the translator of that mega hit, Ken Liu, has translated two volumes of Chinese short stories with a sci-fi/fantasy focus. The first anthology, Invisible Planets, is a sampler offering lots of magical realism, fantasy and a few hard-science pieces. The second, Broken Stars, has more speculative fiction, and feels more Chinese. As in any anthology, the quality is uneven, but a few stories are standouts and I got a solid feel for this embryonic movement. — KK

If you read books on Kindle or iBooks you should be using Readwise. I got turned on to Readwise by Recomendo readers Chris Galtenberg and Len Edgerly almost two years ago, and it’s become an integral part of how I read and retain the words and ideas that grab me. Every passage I highlight in my Kindle is auto-imported and sent back to me in a thrice-weekly email (you can choose the frequency and number of highlights you receive). This service is free for a trial period. I pay $4.99/per month for the upgraded version that allows you to import highlights from other sources, like Medium and Twitter. And I also have it synced to my Evernote account, so that anytime new highlights are imported, my Evernote is updated immediately. Using Readwise makes me want to read more and highlight more, I’ve even started inputing the highlighted passages from my favorite paper books. You can read a random selection of my highlights at: https://readwise.io/@claudia. — CD

Every American should read at least the introductory essay in the NYT’s 1619 Project, which documents the central role that slavery had in America’s rise. Entitled “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true,” it is a strong, tight argument that inverted my own ideas. The whole 1619 package is a seminal work. — KK

The Browser is by far the best guide to great writing on the internet. It’s a newsletter that recommends 4 or 5 great pieces a day — both new ones, or those years old — that are worth your time (and it indicates the piece’s length). Although there is a paid daily version, the free weekly version is a good place to start. I find this newsletter dangerous because the wide variety of subjects is intoxicating and every single article is superb. It’s the most potent distraction in my life, but I don’t regret a minute of it. — KK

Standard Ebooks is a labor of love. They take public domain texts (from Robert E. Howard to Bertrand Russell), scour them for typographical errors, add great cover art, and format them for Kindle and other ereaders. The online catalog is a pleasure to browse, with a synopsis for each book. Join the mailing list or subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on new books added to the catalog. — MF