Kindle Library

I got the Kindle Touch for Christmas! Hooray!

I have been resistant in getting an e-book reader because I get 90% of my books from the library, 5% from bookmooch, and 5% as gifts. So I couldn't justify the cost.

Until Amazon came out with a Kindle that lets you read library e-books. And I got it! I had high hopes for this sucker. I was picturing me reading book after book, wirelessly downloading like crazy.

Er, no.

1. You have to connect the Kindle to the laptop to download any books. It runs off the library e-lending website, powered by Overdrive. You find the book, click a couple of times, and it takes you to Amazon, where you can borrow the book for 14 days. It's strange.

2. The Overdrive search engine blows. It's terrible. 9 times out of 10 it didn't return the results I wanted. I'm searching for newer books that have come out in the last few months. Maybe my library doesn't carry these (I find that hard to believe because I've never had problems with their selection before). I do three searches just to make sure - the book title, the author, and a random what's available in this genre search. I get a lot of "your search returned no results".

3. When it does find the book, it's not available. I'm sure it's a licensing thing, which is dumb, but okay. I find it hard to believe that every stinking book I want is not available. Even the older ones that have been around for 15 years. Whatever, there is an option to place the book on hold.

4. Books on hold! Ha! I thought this would place me in a queue, that I would enter my library card and password, an it would send it to my Kindle when the book is available. Instead, Overdrive asked me for my email address. They'll email me when the book is ready and I have 3 days to download it to my Kindle. That's better than a free-for-all, first come first serve, who has the fastest internet connection. I half expected that when I entered my email address.

5. You can only put 4 books on hold at a time. This is completely arbitrary. My actual library doesn't have that kind of restriction, so why would an e-library?? I currently have 75 books in my Goodreads "to-read" pile. How do I choose 4? Save 1 spot for a book that'll take forever, 2 spots that have short queues, and 1 spot somewhere in the middle? Sorry but I don't want to think that hard. It would be awesome if I could prioritize my 75 books similar to a Netflix queue.

Now that I think about it, there should be a Goodreads/Overdrive widget to let me do just that. Automatically put the top 4 books of my "to-read" pile on hold, so I don't have to struggle with the Overdrive search engine. Make it happen interwebs!

Overall, the Kindle Touch library lending option is harder than I imagined. I wanted something so awesome that I'd never need to drive to the library again. While I may not need to go weekly anymore, I'll probably still make a monthly trip.