I’ve been telling people that the big problem with Kindle–aside from how hard it is to take notes compared to an old dead tree book– is that you can’t share or borrow the overpriced newer (read in -copyright) books. It seems to me that e-books absolutely ought to be the cheapest form of books– minimal materials, you can’t lend it to a friend or resell it, etc. Amazon runs an in-house sharing site where I early on got one good book, the novel about Thomas Cromwell, but it has essentially turned into advertisements for new books for Kindle.
BUT NOW- it has finally happened. It is finally possible to borrow from the library. I had to go in person first to get my card renewed (and I ended up promising to present a program for the library in the spring!) and they were very helpful showing me the website for the regional pool of library e-books, many with waiting lists, but I made the experiment by using “advanced search” and skimming over available books, and found Sarah Waters’ newest. I now have it on my Kindle, for two weeks, anyhow, and I’m thrilled. I don’t know how this works region to region, but here you get up to 5 books, and there is no extension– you go back on the waiting list if you didn’t finish. Fine, who cares. To borrow a Kindle book, you get sent to Amazon, and I had a little to-do about which email was my sign in, and actually ended up calling and speaking to a human being, but the next phase is beginning to happen….