Alisande, you will love The Water Is Wide. I first read it back in the 70s, then enjoyed the movie, and then moved to the part of SC where much of the book takes place and where Conroy grew up. I've been to Daufuskie Island several times.

I'd forgotten about the story until I got a call for a consulting job on Daufuskie and wondered why that name sounded so familiar.

You'll enjoy knowing that, like his other books, many of the primary characters are based on real, live people readily identified by those who are familiar with them. Their names are changed but not much else!

Conroy returned to Beaufort many years ago to retire.

That must be beautiful country, Rhizo! You don't live there now, I gather?

Yes, Conroy retired to Beaufort with his (third) wife, whom he met at a reading or writer's convention or something. I really should get out more. LOL

No, I lived there for well over twenty years, loving every minute of it except when I was slapping at sand gnats or running from hurricanes.

I meant to tell you that I adore the photograph! You look so earnest in your little jumper.

He's one of my favorite authors too. I know you will enjoy the book. I had a very close friend from that part of the country and I 'hear her' every time I read one of his books; that wonderful way of putting words together just brings me such joy. Darling photo, too!

I do look earnest. LOL I think I was "reading" a newspaper.

The first Conroy book I read was The Great Santini. My dad had sent it to me, saying it was a good book. When I finished it, I raved about it so much that he said, "It was good, but I didn't think it was that good." :-)

Pat Conroy is one of my favorite authors. I have many of his books but I have never read The Water is Wide. I know you will enjoy it!

Holy mackerel. Thank you so much for this thread, it opened a whole world for me. I had no idea about Bookbub.

Signed up yesterday, had free books in an email today. I'm not a e- reader, so I ordered a Kindle from Ebay. I've not been reading as much as I used to because I don't get out to the bookstores as often as I used to.

Thank you!

I subscribed to bookbub sometime ago but got tired of the emails. I resubscribed and will pay more attention to it now. I borrowed a book from our library through Overdrive. Borrowers are only allowed to keep books 3 weeks, and I often spend more than three weeks on a book. (Slow reader) I'm reading the book Mycroft Holmes and had to buy it after the three weeks ran out.

Thanks for for the reminder about these two sites.

I see that pixel of ink is just for Kindel. Is there something similar for the Samsung Galaxy?

I prefer a 'real book'. I find the tablet gets heavy, and it's difficult to refer back to anything on it. However, the library on Maui has very little to offer -- unlike our library at home -- and we are big readers!

Chisue- you should be able to download a kindle reader to your galaxy. Just look for the Kindle Reader app in Google Play. You can also download the Nook app too if you like to read ebooks from Barnes & Noble.

Yes the kindle, nook and most other e readers have an app you can install on your Android devices and your computer and I believe apple products also. The app is free. There are several other sites for free books that are in other formats like epub which is a very common format. You can get many reader apps from the play store that will read various formats. I use on my tablets and phone the kindle app, AI reader app, Aldiko reader app. With those I can read pretty much any format of books.

Be sure to check out pixel of ink site it's by far my favorite one for free and discounted books.

http://www.pixelofink.com/

Kindle app

http://www.aldiko.com/

Another source that has multiple formats not just kindle is feedbooks.

http://www.feedbooks.com/

I guess I should add that BookBub shows me books for only two readers because that's what I told them I have. Their website lists Kindle, Nook, Android, Kobo, and Apple iBooks.

I always check the Amazon reviews, especially the negative ones. Authors' friends have a way of posting glowing reviews. Some are obvious, but not all. I also check the original publisher. I'm intrigued with some debut novels, but I pass on self-published ones. Yes, I might miss a good book that way, but I'm more likely to miss a lot of poorly written and/or poorly edited ones.

Thanks for your generous help. As soon as I recover from reaching into the oven to replace the light bulb...oh, my aching back...I'll look into this. We have downloaded books from our home library -- didn't know there was an app to let you do that from almost *any* library.

I think we need to start up with Amazon Prime -- for books and for movies. We're such 'old dogs', trying to learn today's tricks! We have the Galaxy and a Sony Blu-Ray here at the condo.

Speaking of Pat Conroy, I paid $2 for the unabridged audio book of The Lords of Discipline at the library's used book sale and started listening to it today. It begins with Conroy himself talking about the book and reaction to it. The narrator of the book has a deep voice with a heavy southern accent--not at all like Conroy. I'm getting used to it though.

socks, you can keep a library (Overdrive) sourced Kindle book and keep reading it on a Kindle reader for months and months IF (and only if) you turn off your data signal (whether Wifi or through a cell carrier). It's through that sign on that the Amazon site is contacted and the deadlines for library downloads are enforced and overdue ones get deleted. How you make that work is by downloading several books at a time, read them all with the data signal off, then connect and download several more. Repeat as desired.

chisue, while there are Overdrive apps for different tablets and PCs, you can only check out library books from libraries where you have an account. But different libraries have different/nonidentical Overdrive subscriptions so you're likely to find books on the Hawaii Library Overdrive site that may not be available from your home library and vice versa.

You can download Overdrive material from anywhere. Several of my kids have spent time living abroad and they were able to continue to download Overdrive-sourced Kindle and audio books using their US library accounts.

I just got my Kindle Paperwhite yesterday, my first reading device. Amazing!!!

I registered with Amazon and they sent me a $5 coupon so I got a book from them. They have a book club 'Kindle Unlimited' for I think $9.99/month that looks like it has lots of highly rated books (but not some of the recent bestsellers).

That actually looks like a good deal. Years ago I used to read almost a book a day, probably can't do that any more between gardening, other stuff, and the new grand baby, but I could very possibly read 10 books a month.

That's great, Lucille. You'll have fun with it!

We discussed the kindle unlimited account here recently. I decided it was not a worthwhile purchase because the selection of books was not great. I can get such great buys from other sources like pixel of ink, bookbub, bookgorilla and from Amazon directly in their free and daily download specials. I would check out all those options before paying for the kindle unlimited. I have literally thousands of books on my devices and rarely paid for them or if I did it is generally under 3 bucks.

Congratulations on your new kindle.

Just going to mention that on amazon itself if you put in free kindle, they do have some of the older classics available. ( I too got a paperwhite recently and really love it. )

I am not a book buyer though so free as in free from amazon or library is what I do. There is another site, project gutenberg which has all the older books which no longer have the copyrites available for free as well. I did subscirbe to some of those bookbub and book gorilla but honestly never saw anything I wanted to read. I guess I am a finicky reader like that.

I went and did a search for the kindle unlimited conversation and I have to agree with you that it may not be worthwhile, Raven.

I think what I need to do, is just look through all the different possibilities, at the moment I am overwhelmed by how many books are available, and need to just get used to the digital book world so as to have a better feeling for what I might like. I started to read a book from Bookbub and didn't care for it, that doesn't mean there aren't lots of wonderful titles, it just means that I need to learn to do better searches.

I'm going to try the 'free kindle' search also, thank you for the suggestion Sheila.

Lucille, I find it helpful to check the Amazon reviews when deciding whether or not to order a book. I particularly like to look at the negative reviews. Sometimes the glowing positives are a tad suspect. I suppose the same could be said of the negatives, but if someone reports being put off by the same things that would bother me, I move on.

Of course, the positive reviews that tell why they liked it are helpful as well.