Kindle + OverDrive + NY Public Library = reader bliss

I haven’t read this much since I was an undergraduate English major at the University of Toronto.

Two years ago, I got a Kindle. Immediately, I installed OverDrive on my mobile phone so that I could borrow e-books from public libraries. I then applied for a New York Public Library card, which any New York State resident can do.

You don’t need to be in the NYPL to have access to its digital riches!

It’s incredible.

I have access to the digital archives of the second largest library in the United States; the fourth largest in the world.

It’s the epitomy of instant gratification.

Reading the The New York Times on a Sunday morning, I see a rave recommendation for Jessym Ward’s Salvage the Bones. It is on my Kindle minutes later. A recent article in the same paper announced Oxford University’s surprising and somewhat controversial appointment of Simon Armitage as Professor of Poetry, second only in the UK to poet laureate. I enjoy his book, Seeing Stars, that evening.

While reading Into the Wild, I note Jon Krakauer’s fascination with David Roberts’ Finding Everett Ruess. I grab my iPhone, log into the NYPL, borrow the audio book and start listening on the treadmill the next day. In a phone conversation, my father-in-law recommends Pete Hamill’s North River. I hang up and borrow it. We discuss it ten days later when I visit him.

In her excellent review of Toni Morrison’s latest novel God Help the Child, my cousin Karen Brady raves about Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye. It’s on my Kindle before I finish the review. I remember that I always wanted to read Norman Mailer’s The Fight about the Ali-Forman “rumble in the jungle” in Kinshasa, Zaire. Yes, you guessed it.

Here’s the complete list between January 2015 and September 2020:

• Darke, Rick Gekoski
• The Known World, Edward P.
• I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson, Jackie Robinson
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel, David Mitchell
• The Leopard: A Novel, Giuseppe Di Lampedusa
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles C. Mann
• The Man Who Walked Through Time: The Story of the First Trip Afoot Through the Grand Canyon, Colin Fletcher
• The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, William Goldman
• The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, Andrea Wulf
• Apeirogon: A Novel , Colum McCann
• A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
• The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, Erik Larson
• The Little Red Chairs, Edna O’Brien
• Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet, Will Hunt
• The Innocents: A Novel, Michael Crummey
• The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctica, 1910-1913, Apsley Cherry-Garrard
• Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: A Novel, Tom Robbins
• Night Boat to Tangier: A Novel, Kevin Barry
• Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy, Olivia Manning
• Any Human Heart, William Boyd
• The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found, Violet Moller
• In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, Hampton Sides
• To the Bright Edge of the World: A Novel, Eowyn Ivey
• Machines Like Me: A Novel, Ian McEwan
• Misercordias: Book 1, Carson McKenna
• On the Move: A Life Borrowed, Oliver Sacks
• Gratitude, Oliver Sacks
• Zoli: A Novel, Colum McCann
• A Long Way from Home: A novel, Peter Carey
• The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, David Grann
• Thirteen Ways of Looking, Colum McCann
• The Long Take: A noir narrative, Robin Robertson
• Educated: A Memoir, Tara Westover
• The Only Story: A novel, Julian Barnes
• The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War,
  Ben Macintyre
• Lake Success: A Novel, Gary Shteyngart
• Washington Black: A novel, Esi Edugyan
• Fire Sermon, Jamie Quatro
• On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
• Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal, Ben Macintyre
• The Spinning Heart: A Novel, Donal Ryan
• Love Is Blind: A novel, William Boyd
• River-Horse: A Voyage Across America, William Least Heat-Moon
• The Driver’s Seat, Muriel Spark
• The Overstory: A Novel, Richard Powers
• In the Distance, Hernan Diaz
• A Sport and a Pastime: A Novel, James Salter
• The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, Frank Ostaseski
• The Plains, Gerald Murnane
• Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rovelli
• Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana
• Couples: A Novel,  John Updike
• Reservoir 13: A Novel, Jon McGregor
• History of Wolves: A Novel, Emily Fridlund
• The Sellout: A Novel, Paul Beatty
• Nutshell: A Novel, Ian McEwan
• The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith: A Novel, Thomas Keneally
• Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel, George Saunders
• A Brief History of Seven Killings: A Novel, Marlon James
• The Sicilian: A Novel (The Godfather Book 2), Mario Puzo
• The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel (P.S.), Michael Chabon
• Last Bus to Wisdom: A Novel , Ivan Doig
• When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi
• Things Fall Apart (African Trilogy, Book 1), Chinua Achebe
• Flaubert’s Parrot, Julian Barnes
• Eve’s Hollywood, Eve Babitz
• Tenth of December: Stories, George Saunders
• The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes
• The Snow Child: A Novel, Eowyn Ivey
• Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies, Ben Macintyre
• Arthur and George, Julian Barnes
• My Losing Season, Pat Conroy
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
• Love, Toni Morrison
• Dark Matter: A Novel, Blake Crouch
• In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, Hampton Sides (audio book)
• Sweet Tooth: A Novel, Ian McEwan
• Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
• Independence Day, Richard Ford
• Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
• Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth
• A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel, John Irving
• The Buried Giant: A novel, Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Godfather, Mario Puzo
• The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Book 1), Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• The Waterworks, E.L. Doctorow
• Dead Wake, Eric Larson
• Life After Life: A Novel, Kate Atkinson
• Right Ho, Jeeves, P. G. Wodehouse
• North River: A Novel, Pete Hamill
• In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, Erik Larson
• Seeing Stars, Simon Armitage
• The Men Who United the States: America’s Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible, Simon Winchester
• The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton
• The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
• City of God, E. L. Doctorow (audio book)
• All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel, Anthony Doerr
• Nora Webster: A Novel, Colm Toibin
• Finding Everett Ruess, David Roberts (audio book)
• Salvage the Bones: A Novel, Jesmyn Ward
• The Orchard Keeper, Cormac McCarthy
• Collected Stories, Frank O’Connor
• Ragtime: A Novel, E.L. Doctorow
• The Fight, Norman Mailer
• Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer

“NYC Public Library Research Room Jan 2006” by Diliff – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NYC_Public_Library_Research_Room_Jan_2006.jpg#/media/File:NYC_Public_Library_Research_Room_Jan_2006.jpg