I feel that it is my duty, as a fellow lover of all things literature, to share my favorite and most recent app find. Is your budget cutting into your reading time? Are you low on time and energy spent making trips to the local book store or library? Behold, the app: Libby!
Last week, I came across this app while discussing our current cult favorite books with my boss. I was expressing my concern about having to buy and carry all these books for my soon to be trip to China. There is no way, I will turn down the opportunity to spend the majority of my travel time (close to 48 hours long) reading away, and drifting into la la land. So I was on the cusp of giving into having to purchase a bundle of heavy books, when my boss asked me why I just don’t download the app Libby? And the answer is: because I didn’t know this was a thing!
Libby allows you to check out online, and access audio books through your phone or kindle without the hassle and inconvenience of having to travel to a library in between your busy hectic day. Check out books, as in rent, as in free?! What! Not only is it completely free to check out books, the app is free to download as well. Wins on wins on wins.
Here’s how Libby works: punch in your library card number and pin and let the application find your local library, or enter the address in manually. Once you have locked down your specific library, you are in! There are over 17,900 titles all ranging from Fiction to Romance and every collection and genre in between. And these books aren’t old and out of date, they are current best sellers, which was a high selling point for me!
This isn’t to say that we need to kick real books to the side and forget about spending countless Sundays strolling through books stores in search of our next favorite read, because I love physically holding a book as much as the next person, but it is an added convenience for when you don’t have a Sunday to spare. So, if you have a trip planned that has a lengthy travel time, or you live out of state and are working with your hometown’s library card, or life is simply too crazy, and you are having a difficult time spending the time walking around a library or book store, this app is going to change your life.