Recently got back into checking books out from the online ebook lending library (Overdrive) that the Oakland Public Library contracts with. It’s really good. So simple. They have all the latest books. Any book that’s popular. And they get beamed directly to your Kindle by Amazon, and then synched across all devices just like a book that you’ve purchased. I checked out Laura Lippman’s And When She Was Good, for instance, and finished it in a day. It’s exactly like buying the book. Same ease of use. Except I didn’t have to buy it.

Now I’m reading Jennifer Egan’s Visit From The Goon Squad. Liked the looks of it. Checked it out and was reading it within minutes. When I went out to buy groceries, I had some downtime, so I whipped out my phone and downloaded it to the Kindle app and it picked up my page exactly where I left off.

This makes me wonder, though, what the point is of Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited lending service. Why pay ten bucks a month to get something that your public library will give you for free? Actually, the library is even better, since they have books from major publishers, whereas I think the Kindle Unlimited service still doesn’t have any books from the Big Five.