Useful prep books to store on a kindle for use in an emergency

[Muddytoes1]

I’ve been thinking that it might be useful to have some books stored on my kindle in case of being in a situation where we’d need to be more self sufficient. Wouldn’t necessarily read them all now, more just have them stored in case they are needed. Thought it would be a good way to store info and could use a small solar charger in case of power outages. Does anyone’s have any recommendations? I’m thinking along the lines of growing food and self sufficiency, maybe something medical, other useful skills? What do you reckon?

I'd be more inclined to have hard copies but that's just me.
Any gardening book that suits you.
Anything to do with preserving food without a freezer.
I have the SAS guide in hard copy but, frankly, I am more of a bugging in kind of person.
Collins Food for free is a good foraging book.
"What to do when there's no doctor" is an interesting read.

Thanks @bellinisurge! I initially thought hard copies too however if you needed to move you could take a whole library with you on a super light device that would be good. Just so used to be able to YouTube how to do everything and think it would be good to store some crucial knowledge somehow.

Good point about traveling light. Suggest saving stuff to a Dropbox account or similar and onto a thumb drive.

I’d read a few on the kindle first before thinking you can rely on them: some are totally atrocious, even ones written by so-called “expert” preppers. I’d get a few cheap ones off eBay: Much better to have the information in you head than in a kindle. For travelling light you can get little pocket plant identification books and first aid books (which is probably the only prep books I would want to take with me if I had to flee).

Thanks @ElyElyOy that’s def worth knowing it’s not all great stuff. I’d definitely want to read some stuff but I guess I’m thinking more along the lines of manuals of skills e.g mechanic stuff, medical etc. So whilst obviously I couldn’t train myself to be a doctor if a situation arose it might be possible to look up how to attempt a specific procedure e.g stitching a wound. I’m probably being very naive that you could just look up how to do stuff like that but I’m used to being in a world with instant access to information and suppose attempting in a way to hang onto some small element of that.

@bellinisurge I do like the idea of saving files. Guess you could save videos and stuff too that way. Never used to worry about stuff like this but have a baby due mid April and it’s making me feel vulnerable I guess. I know it’s not going to be the end of the world it’s just got me thinking.

As an avid reader I have & read a lot of kindle books.
Periodically, they require that I connect to the internet to refresh the licences & until I do, those books that are requesting a licence check will not open.

If you do not try to open a book, it will not tell you that you need to do that though, so if you store a book for a year, it may not open when you need it.

For this reason, I wouldn't recommend relying on storing anything you need long term in a SHTF scenario on a kindle if it is from Amazon.

I read a lot on my kindle too and I have never once had the experience @snugglepumpkin describes. I have a bunch of books I bought from amazon as well as many others I have gotten from other people and stored on my computer.

Do you reread books you've downloaded already @BlowPoke ?

I do, so e.g. last week when I decided to reread my Jodi Taylor series of books which are on one of my kindles none of them would open.
I last read them over a year ago & they worked just fine then.

I have had this happen with books by numerous authors on 3 different kindles over the years.

@Snugglepumpkin wow I had never heard of this - very useful to know this could be a problem as this has never happened to me before.

I think you’d be better off doing a first aid course (and having a little hard copy book, most courses give you one when you complete the course), and a car maintenance manual for the type of car you have.

I have a general DIY book that gives basic advice on repairing leaks etc: but you’d need to have the tools and materials to do it. Although having a hard copy in these instances helps as the pictures are good.

You also need to know where your boiler/appliance manuals are as they will have the basic self-repair stuff you can do yourself in there (like re-pressurising the boiler etc).