Actually, public libraries have been in the digital age for a while now, but I just started borrowing eBooks from my public library last June.  This is all thanks to my wonderful friend Lois G. who convinced me that digital borrowing wasn’t quite as complicated as it sounded, and was worth the trouble.  She gave me some guidance on which menus to click on which screens, and, after I had worked up my courage for a few days, I got started.

One of the hardest parts was finding a book to borrow.  I have an extensive list of books I would like to read, and I tried some titles and authors once I got into the eBook library, but they didn’t have any of them.  Prolific cosy mystery author Carolyn Hart was on my list, and when I put in her name, one of her books, Ghost in Trouble, was actually available to borrow.  Once I found a book, I went through the screen prompts to put it on my Kindle.  I hit a snag when the screen told me my circa 2009 Kindle 2 didn’t have the necessary whatsit to receive the book directly, I would have to download it through the USB port.  After much random button pushing that did not make the book appear on my Kindle (properly plugged into the USB port), I finally discovered My Kindle Library on my Amazon account online.  Never knew that was there.  Ghost in Trouble had made it into my Library, I hit the correct button and there it was on the Kindle.

Ghost in Trouble is about someone named Bailey Ruth who died, went to heaven, and goes back to earth sometimes to solve mysteries.  As a ghost, Bailey can change her clothes and hairstyles at will, and Carolyn Hart describes each outfit in detail.  The plot actually wasn’t bad, but the cutesy ghost was irritating.  As a first try at borrowing an eBook, Ghost in Trouble was a great success; the book itself, not so much.  This is what public libraries are for: trying new authors.  Maybe some of Hart’s other cosy series are OK, but this one didn’t do it for me.

Since then, I’ve had much better success finding books.  I borrowed the first two books from Susan Elia MacNeal’s Maggie Hope series:  Mr. Churchill’s Secretary and Princess Elizabeth’s Spy.  In 1940, American Maggie Hope shares the London house she inherited from her grandmother with a group of other young women.  A friend gets British-by-birth Maggie a job on Winston Churchill’s secretarial staff, where she seizes the chance to use her mathematical education and code breaking skills to get unofficially involved in espionage.  Churchill himself is a character in Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, and the unraveling of a plot to assassinate him is central to the book.  Details about life in wartime Britain support the story, although I find Maggie a little too opinionated and brash for the period. The Brits don’t seem to mind, especially when she puts her life on the line to thwart the assassins.  Princess Elizabeth’s Spy is the second book in the series, with Maggie Hope, now a member of British Intelligence, assigned to protect a young Princess Elizabeth.  Princess Elizabeth and other members of the royal household are characters in the book, and the author does a good job with the people and the setting.  Maggie’s friends and coworkers in these books are often interesting in their own right, and have their own concerns and important roles to play in the action.  These books don’t have the substance of the Maisie Dobbs books, but they are good historical mysteries.

I was well into the Maisie Dobbs series when I discovered library eBooks, and was happy to borrow The Mapping of Love and Death and A Lesson in Secrets, the 7th and 8th books in the series.  I love the way Maisie and the people she knows change and develop as the books progress.  There is a real sense of time passing in this series, and Maisie matures and grows deeper and more interesting in each book.  I’ve actually put off reading the last two books, because I will be sad when they are over.

I put a hold on The Bridge of Sighs, by Olen Steinhauer, and didn’t have to wait too long to borrow it.  The hold system is great:  you can see how many holds are before you, and an e-mail notification comes when the book is available.  The Bridge of Sighs is one of Steinhauer’s Eastern Europe novels, set in a grim post-World War II Communist country full of brutality and corruption.  The characters were dull and/or venal, and it just wasn’t interesting.  I thought the Milo Weaver novels I’ve read, The Tourist and The Nearest Exit, were much better.

I also found more books by two other authors I recently discovered, Steve Berry and Robert Crais.  I borrowed The Templar Legacy and The Alexandria Link, the first two books in Berry’s Cotton Malone series.  Berry might sensationalize history, but he knows enough about the facts to keep things in hand.  I also read The Third Secret, one of Steve Berry’s stand alone books and found the Catholic conspiracy plot confusing and a little slow .  I borrowed one of Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole novels, The Last Detective, and thought it wasn’t just a good thriller, it was a good novel.  I didn’t like the next Elvis Cole book I borrowed, Stalking the Angel, nearly as much.  This is an earlier book in the series, and it was violent, and most of the characters were awful, with no redeeming qualities.  I was disappointed.

On-line borrowing seems to work best when I’m looking for books by popular authors I already know about.  There are too many books in each category and the system is too slow to make browsing easy.  The tricky thing is getting the timing of the loans right:  two weeks go by very quickly, especially if I have other things to read.