[allison1]

Hi, I'm Allison, and I'm a freebie addict. (Hi, Allison)

I have a K2, and have been using almost entirely Amazon services for my reading. I have several thousand books in my archive. This has become unwieldy and problematic. For example, when I look at the archive on my K2, more than half of my books don't show up. I wonder if anyone else has this problem... So far I haven't met anyone.

Recently, in addition to the joys of free books, I have discovered the joys of lendle.me. And library lending. This has compounded my organizational issues. In addition, since I am reading more now than I have at any point in my life, I am interested in some type of book journaling.

More specific about me:
I use a K2, with most books from Amazon (currently ~9k books). I am in the process of moving as many out of the Amazon ecosystem as is feasible. I'm at the beginning of the first step - getting books from gutenberg that are public domain, and organizing these in calibre. I am hoping that this will make my Kindle archives more accessible, and also, streamline the process some, if I need to replace my kindle. Next, I will look at other sources of free books, and see if others can be replaced that way. Free book website suggestions are very welcome!

I have 2 roommates, also, that I'd like to be able to share content with. One with a Sony reader, another with a Nook. And, I'd like to be able to read from my computer (a windows xp - soon to be windows 7, and an ubuntu box). I don't yet plan to "liberate" my Amazon content, but the next time I have to re-download to a new kindle, I may change my mind. I am working with calibre mobile right now, putting my replacement content on a stick.

So why am I here? To learn about calibre, free books, and book journaling. To find a community of readers, and maybe even a few people who don't look at me like I'm nuts, when I say that I have 9k books, and I'm pretty interested in most of them!