Literary Discoveries

When I am feeding Kaitlyn, I often read. Since she often takes a long time to eat, and since she's still eating often through the day, I've been reading a lot lately! Here are a few things I have discovered (or re-discovered) in my reading recently:

Andre Norton- I like her writing! It's fun. I picked up a couple of free ebooks by her, a while ago, and read them last month. There's nothing earthshattering about them, but I definitely enjoyed them. This week I went and downloaded several more free ebooks. I'm sad that the Witch World series isn't available free. (It might or might not be available in ebook format; I didn't really look at the stuff I would have had to pay for...) That's the only Andre Norton that I've read any of, and it was a long time ago that I read it, and I don't remember anything. But I'm enjoying the random books I did find. Classic sci-fi-- brainless and entertaining.

Rudyard Kipling- I re-read Kim recently and was reminded of why I like Kipling. He's bound by some of the perspective of his time period, with which I don't always agree, but he's a good and interesting writer. After reading Kim last time, just a couple of years ago, I went and found a bunch of Kipling's short stories and read them. I might have to go re-read those now. Did he write any other novels? (I should know this, and I could look it up, but I haven't yet.)

Jules Verne- I finally read 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea recently. It's the first thing I've actually read by him. And I was unimpressed. He started out with an explanation of how the Nautilus worked, complete with the math of surface area versus water pressure; it was far too technical for my taste. Then the majority of the book was purely a half-fictional tour of the world's oceans, with long lists of fish and plants... I also didn't particularly care for the main character, from whose perspective the story was told. Not that he was a bad person-- he just wasn't an interesting one, either! The book just didn't turn out to be my style. Does anyone know if Verne's other stuff is better? I'll be happy to try Around the World in 80 Days or Journey to the Center of the Earth if either is more fun, but not if they're going to be the same as this one.

Ken Follett- I don't know anything about his earlier work, but I read the first book in his recent historical fiction series about the 20th century. The book is Fall of Giants, and it covers the lead-up to World War I and the war itself, from the perspective of several families in England, Germany, Russia, and America. I found it very interesting and also entertaining. The characters' stories were compelling in themselves, and I learned a lot of history too. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the 2nd book in the series at some point.

Anybody have suggestions for me? I'm especially interested in things I can find for free in ebook format; my Kindle is by far the easiest thing to read from while I'm nursing. I'm open to new or classic authors, or to books I've forgotten about and should re-read! :)