Amazon Celebrates National Reading Month

March is “National Reading Month,” and Amazon’s greeting it with a special deal on their Kindle! They’ve slashed its price by more than 25% — to just $59. It’s a “limited-time” offer, but it’s also Amazon’s way of making it easier to read. (Especially Kindle ebooks, from Amazon…) And Amazon’s also doing even more to encourage reading….

Amazon’s also created a new web page with links to more special collections of books. “What Will You Read This Month?” the page asks, with another subtitle: “Discover a New Story.” And the first link is Amazon’s impressive list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime. It’s “a bucket list of books to create a well-read life,” assembled by the editors at Amazon.

There’s also another link to a fun list of best books chosen by readers from the online community at GoodReads.com. (“Vote for your favorites,” it urges, with several intriguing categories.) There’s Best Books of the 21st Century, Best Books of the Decade: 2000s, Best books of March 2015, and of course — Best Books Ever. The list’s #1 book is “The Hunger Games, with a Harry Potter book at #2 and a Twilight book at #4. “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” came in at #9…

Amazon’s also created a new page called Books to Look for This Spring. (“Twenty books we think you’ll be hearing a lot more about this season…”) Glenn Greenwald has written a new book about Edward Snowden, and 82-year-old novelist Tom Robbins is finally delivering a personal memoir, “stitching together stories of his unconventional life, from his Appalachian childhood to his globetrotting adventure”. And at the end of March, Michael Lewis will release another new investigation into Wall Street — this one highlighting “the good guys” who tried to reform a broken stock market…by creating their own.

There’s lots of new and exciting things to read — and I have to admit that I’m reading more ever since Kindle came into my life. I can imagine a parent giving one to their children, to try to make reading seem high-tech and fancy and cutting-edge. But the most important thing will always be the books, and I feel like Amazon understands that too.

Because they’re celebrating National Reading Month with appreciative lists of some very great books…