The setting for this weekend’s amazing discovery: I bounced along in a school bus in the pre-dawn hours of a wet Saturday morning. My middle school aged companions played music (can I tell you how much I hate “Turn Down for What?”) and their latest digital gaming obsession, something about cards and clans.
I wanted something to do.
A quick clean up of my inbox brought me to Word Nerd heaven (thank you Amy Lynn Andrews): Amazon just launched Prime Reading! Prime members now have unlimited access to over 1,000 titles, including fiction, non-fiction, and my favorite, magazines. I downloaded the latest issue of Runner’s World and read about Steve Prefontaine to inspire me on the way to our cross country meet.
I needed something to read and had it within 60 seconds. My goodness, we live in a golden age. Just another reason why the $99 annual Prime fee is worth it.
Prime Reading Details
It’s pretty simple. If you have a Prime membership, you can access over 1,000 books, Kindle singles, and periodicals, as many as you want. You don’t need a Kindle, just the Kindle app so you can read what you download on pretty much any device.
We’ve had Kindles for years and have sometimes used the Kindle Lending Library. With that program, you can borrow one free Kindle book per month. The selection isn’t stellar, but we read The Hunger Games series through that program. Prime Reading should be even better.
The options in Prime Reading look decent. Here are some examples.
In Teens:
- The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg, fantasy, 2015.
- Half Way Home by Hugh Howey, science fiction, 2014.
- Ella’s Twisted Senior Year by Amy Sparling, contemporary realistic, 2016.
In Popular:
- The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, self-help, 2014.
- Travel Guides for multiple countries by The Lonely Planet
- The Monster That Ate My Socks by A.J. Cosmo, children’s, 2012
In Magazines, all the most recent issues of:
- People
- Sports Illustrated
- Entertainment Weekly
- Runner’s World
- Shape
I’m definitely going to use this in the future – even if it’s just for the magazines. It will come in handy when my kids say, “Mom, I need something to read… now!”
Another Prime benefit…
As an aside, Prime Music has also been a big hit in our house the past few months. Daughter, a music fanatic, used to spend a ton at the iTunes store. Thank goodness her cousin introduced her to Prime Music. Since summer, she’s downloaded over 200 songs, all costs included in our annual fee. We can’t use the streaming part of the Amazon music app – that would kill our data, and we’ve got serious data issues – but the downloads aren’t too data costly, and Daughter often uses public wifi to get her tunes.
With Prime Music, and the Amazon music app, you can make playlists and even import other music (like iTunes songs) into Amazon music. I use bluetooth to play it in the van. Last week I downloaded Jesse’s Girl by Rick Springfield. Remember that one?
Like the books and movies available through Prime, you won’t be able to find everything, especially not recent releases (I had to suck it up and buy the new Shawn Mendes album), but you can still find a lot that meets your fancy.
Have you tried Prime Reading? What do you think? How about any of the other Prime benefits?
Perhaps my kids should pay part of the annual Prime fee… 😉
Thanks for adding to the discussion.
So glad you posted about this today! Prime Reading popped onto my screen when I went to Amazon the other day and I was intrigued. Now I’m definitely interested! I have never read a book on a screen, but slowly slowly…I may becoming converted (especially with fave magazines, Runner’s World and guilty People pleasure 🙂 ) I’m going to download the Kindle app RIGHT NOW!
My kids have been talking about Prime Music. Thanks for this. AWESOME!
Yes! We can download People and read it without feeling guilty about purchasing a “gossip magazine” at checkout. Our kids don’t even have to know! I appreciate your hesitation about reading on a screen, and I still prefer a “hard copy” book, but sometimes, especially when traveling, it’s nice to have a digital version at your fingers. This would be a good way for you to try it out without investing too much $$!