Wednesday 5 January 2011

Ebooks on my phone: another reason to love my public library

Standing outside the opticians, waiting to meet my dad, normally would be pretty boring. I came to town with only a little handbag, no room for a book! OH WAIT. Getting out my phone, opening up the Overdrive app, I've got a choice of the ebook I'm in the middle of, or a couple of audiobooks I've downloaded and are waiting for me to start. I'm hooked on my book so I open that up, and the 15 minutes are now pleasantly whiling away!

I'm not going to say that reading a book on a 4 inch screen is as good as having the physical book, this fits about 3 sentences on a page and you're turning pages every 5 seconds. Also Overdrive tended to think a bit too long about turning the pages, there was often a slight pause between me touching the screen and the page turning. However, for something to read whilst waiting for a bus, or a dad, it's very convenient! And before I was a chapter into the book (I was reading Children of Men by P.D. James) I'd got into a rhythm of tapping the screen just before I finished reading the page, so all was well :) If a book is good, it's going to be good whatever medium it's read through.

My experience so far of listening to audiobooks on my phone has been even better, Sense and Sensibility and Stephen King's Quitters, Inc., have both gone down very well as bedtime listening.

But best of all? These were freeeeeeee! Overdrive is a free app, and the ebooks and audiobooks were all borrowed from Herts Library. Not too shabby!

3 comments:

  1. Interesting development by Herts Library... I've used Amazon's Kindle to download books to ipods and netbooks. How come it's free (if you get to keep the download)?

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  2. You don't actually get to keep it, the file expires at the end of the loan period (Herts has a 7 day loan which I think is a bit short, some other libraries lend them for up to 21 days). But you don't have to live in Hertfordshire to join Herts libraries, and I think the same will be true for most other public libraries. Might be worth giving it a try!

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