theFIREstarter

Happy free e-book Thursday everyone! Yes it’s only one more day till the weekend so to celebrate I will share with you my short list of free e-books that I’ve found on my epic journeys through the hills and valleys of internetland over the past few months. I also have a few blog announcement type things to say underneath if you have a very long attention span and aren’t already devouring your free e-books at the total exclusion of everything else in your life.

Free E-Book #1: Mt Bullshit

I came across a like-minded soul a few weeks back called John who runs the excellent website Practical Civilization. Not only is he an entertaining and informative writer, but is also generous to fault, as he is giving away a free e-book called Mt Bullshit. You should probably be warned that one of his favourite words is Bullshit (in case you hadn’t already guessed) but a healthy dose of swearing never hurt anyone in my opinion. The e-book is concise, an easy read, funny in many places, but also contains lots of useful information about how to live a life on a different path than the one sold to us by the media and main stream society. What are you waiting for? Sign up and download it now here, before we call bullshit on your sorry ass!

Free E-Book #2: Gods Debris

Written by the creator of Dilbert (the comic strip) Scott Adams, I had my reservations about this one but couldn’t really argue with the price, so downloaded it anyway. Well, I have to say, it’s probably one of the best books I have ever read! I won’t ruin the story line but will just say it makes you think, really think deeply about certain so called truths about the world and life in general, has some great advice in there. And you get that nice warm glow feeling at the end that only an experienced author can give you. The only criticism I could volley it’s way would be that it is too short, as I wanted it to continue. I might read it again today in fact! Download it here.

(There is a sequel called The Religion War which I haven’t read yet and isn’t available as a free e-book, but it’s on my reading list)

Free E-Book #3: The Moneyless Manifesto

This should really be top of the list as it sounds right up this bloggers alley, but I haven’t actually had time to read it yet, so can’t give you a hearty recommendation. My new blogging buddy Zoe at Eco Thrifty Living put me onto it and in fact has been raving about it, so it must be damn good. Download it here.

Free E-Book #4: Makers

I started to read this on my last holiday but never got round to finishing it, but it started well and could be very interesting. It is kind of geeky new-skool sci-fi, or something like that. Anyway, if you have a spare few hours or are struggling to find something to occupy you, I think it will be definitely worth a read. Download it here.

Free E-Book #5: The Richest Man in Babylon

I think I read this about five years ago on a free kindle download but I am not 100% sure. It is an old book (first published 1926) so the style is somewhat strange if you are not used to that sort of thing, but I quite like it – it makes you feel you are reading some long lost wisdom. Oftentimes the oldest ideas are the best! Anyway this is a book that contains the basic methods of how to become wealthy, which have not really changed over the years, so it is still very relevant today. Download it here.

Free E-Book #6: The Newbies Guide To Publishing

Another one I haven’t actually read, but it is over 1000 pages long! It is actually a huge collection of blog posts from the site with the same title, assembled in some sort of order. Looks to be very useful for any kind of aspiring writer, and there is a whole section on the internet and blogging, which is where I am naturally going to start. Hopefully we’ll all be rocking some legendary posts that take the blogosphere by storm before you can say “404 page not found”! Download it here.

Blog updates

Well that was my collection of free e-books, hope you enjoyed one of more them! If you have any others you would recommend please let me know down below (that is, in the comments section, not in my nether regions!).

I thought it might be worth doing a quick update on how the blog is doing seeing as people tend to like this sort of thing. When I say people I think I mean “other bloggers”, but maybe real people also like to see progress as well.

Well, I have just hit over 1000 unique visitors in a month for the first time, so I am happy with that. Some other blogs I have been following have grown far quicker in shorter amount of time, but on the other hand some of the others haven’t, or have just dissapeared off the face of the Earth. So on the grand scale of things I think I am doing ok. There have been 152 geniune comments and a further 2454 spam comments, and unfortunately I only recently realised that all of my pingback comments (this is where wordpress software tells you someone has linked to your website) were going into spam, so I need to work out why that happened. It is obviously useful to know automatically when someone links to your site!

Since discovering the pingback issue I realised I have been included or featured on the following blogging/personal finance carnivals:

Lifestyle Carnival 87th Edition

Carnival of Financial Independence, 44th edition

Carnival of Personal Finance #435, on the road again edition

And also on The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Taking Things for Granted Edition which caused a huge spike in traffic back in October, which to be honest I really wasn’t ready for (and happened while I was on holiday!) so unfortunately I don’t think many of those people stuck around. No bother, slow and steady growth is the name of the game.

Well that is where we are my friends! My final task for this post is to thank everyone who has been reading so far, I sincerely hope you stick around for the upcoming months. It’s going to be a lot of fun I think.

TFS.x