Exploring Library E-Books

Rick (Rick and Paulette's RV Travels) put a link on his blog to a post that he wrote last September about using the library to find books for his new Sony E-reader.  This topic is of great interest to me since I am an avid library user.

We don’t own an e-reader yet, but we are interested in purchasing one.  We think it would be a handy way to take books with us when we travel.  Our local library system, Fort Vancouver Regional Library does not have any e-books at this time. 

I looked online at Multnomah County Library, Portland’s library system.  They do have e-books and even though we are across the river in Washington, patrons from our county, Clark, can check out books and e-books out from the Multnomah Library free of charge.  Multnomah is a member of the Oregon Digital Library Consortium which offers books through a system called Library 2 Go. 

Our first step was to sign up for a Multnomah County library card.  We did this online.  Then the instructions told us to go to any Multnomah library to get the actual card.  Luckily for us, all the libraries are open on Sunday afternoon.  We chose the branch closest to us which was about 20 minutes away.  We got our new library cards!

When we were back home again, we experimented with checking out books.  Since we don’t have an e-reader yet, we downloaded a few books to our computers.  It’s not an ideal way to read e-books, but it allowed us to experiment with the system, see the books, adjust the font size, and see how easy/hard it is to read books online. 

So far, we are impressed with the system.  The two things we don’t like are:

1)  we are each allowed to check out only 6 e-books at one time. 

2)  we can’t delete the books when we are done with them.  They will automatically expire in 7 or 21 days, depending upon how long we checked them out for. 

Tim and Kiersten came over this afternoon and showed us their iPad and Nook.  We liked both.  The iPad is pretty whippy but costs a lot and provides more features than we need right now.  We like the Nook a lot.  The Kindle is also a well-known e-reader and Tim owned one before he got his new iPad.  The disadvantage with the Kindle is that it doesn’t work with the library system.  The Nook and Sony e-readers are the ones supported by Library 2 Go. 

Today was a day filled with visiting, saying goodbye to Jonathan, and learning new things about e-books and e-readers.  It was a busy day!

One More Book

Now that we aren't traveling, I've had time to read more books.  The advantage of having library books put on hold for me is that I never know what's going to arrive.  Instead of reading every book that I get, I read the ones that look most interesting first.  If I don't get around to reading the others, I send them back, or I renew them if possible.  I am a fast reader, so that helps!

I stayed up WAY too late last night finishing this book by Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.  This is a novel, but it is another very true-to-life book.  It tells the story of the Chinese and Japanese in Seattle in 1942.  The main character, Henry Lee, was 12 that year and he befriended a 12-year-old Japanese girl.  Henry's father was very prejudiced against the Japanese, as were many people during WWII, so Henry had to keep the friendship a secret.  The girl's family gets sent to a internment camp, first at Camp Harmony at the Puyallup Fairgrounds near Seattle, and then to the Minidoka camp in SE Idaho. 

Fast forward to 1986.   Henry is 57 and his wife has just died.  He deals with life, stress, his relationship with his adult son, and his memories of the war years.  The story goes back and forth from 1986 to 1942 in a well-written, engaging style. 

If you like traditional jazz music, there is an extra treat for you in this book because Henry is enthralled with jazz, which is something else he has to hide from his father.  I highly recommend this book!

Click here to read the Amazon reviews.