The Libby app put a refuge in my pocket after I wanted it most

A 12 months in the past, I had a e book drawback.

Specifically, I had nowhere to place them. I’m a New York City renter, not a Disney princess. There are not any floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with sliding ladders that I can dangle from, singing concerning the final banger of a novel I learn. It was once that I’d carry a field of books to my mother’s home anytime I ran out of area on my rickety Ikea bookshelf. But when she acquired sick, I promised myself to make do with much less.

Easy repair, proper? Get an e-reader. Thousands of books on a single, light-weight machine. All the E Ink glory my decrepit eyes can deal with. Problem solved? Yes and no. I’ve acquired a Kindle Paperwhite, however I’m low-cost. Despite being intangible, ebooks are typically more expensive than paperbacks. Plus, searching Amazon doesn’t have the identical magic as wandering via a bookstore.

What I wished was the comfort of an e-reader with the curation of a bookstore. If it may very well be as reasonably priced as a library with out forcing this pajama gremlin to go outdoors, all the higher. I texted this actual spiel to a fellow bookworm some time again. When I used to be finished kvetching, she texted again three phrases. “Just download Libby.”

For the uninitiated, Libby is a free (!) library app powered by OverDrive. You can borrow or put holds on magazines and books of all kinds out of your native libraries. (Multiple!) All you want is a library card. For some libraries, you possibly can punch your cellphone quantity into the Libby app to get one. If you don’t know what to learn, you possibly can flick thru curated suggestions. It’s not the identical as these sticky notes you’ll discover at a bookstore, the place the workers write why they liked a selected e book on show, nevertheless it’s higher than Goodreads. And whilst you can learn instantly from the Libby app, you could possibly alternatively ship ebooks to your Kindle to get that candy, candy E Ink goodness.

It sounded good on paper, however I used to be skeptical. This wasn’t my first e-book rodeo, and the app didn’t resolve my primary points with libraries. It nonetheless had lengthy waitlists for standard titles and imposed arbitrary mortgage durations. Libby sat on my cellphone for just a few months, unused. And then, in the summertime of 2021, my mother was recognized with a terminal sickness.

It royally sucked. Books had all the time been my refuge, however they grew to become more and more unavailable to me. When you’re a caregiver, it’s not sensible to lug tomes like The Goldfinch round to varied appointments, and there’s not lots of time to leisurely browse at bookstores. Plus, I used to be broke from overlaying my mother’s medical payments.

It began with audiobooks to drown out my ideas when driving to my mother’s. Libby works with CarPlay (and Android Auto!), and in contrast to Audible, it was free. If I didn’t end an audiobook or a maintain lapsed, it wasn’t a giant deal as a result of I didn’t should go anyplace or really feel like I wasted cash. Then it expanded to operating magazines. I wasn’t operating as usually as I’d have appreciated, nevertheless it was comforting to think about myself crossing end strains after I felt burdened, which was usually. Again, Libby afforded me the fantasy with out throwing a paywall in my face.

I nonetheless held out on novels till I heard about Michelle Zauner’s memoir Crying in H Mart. No spoilers, nevertheless it’s a couple of Korean-American girl shedding her mom and cultural id in a single fell swoop. Eerily related, its existence was a flame burning in my thoughts, and I used to be one other silly moth. After weeks of avoiding it, I cracked — solely to seek out it wasn’t instantly out there in any respect my ordinary haunts. But it was there on Libby. For free, with miraculously no waitlist on the digital Queens Public Library. I tore via it in a single afternoon.

After that, I noticed I had a free, transportable little refuge wherever I went. Since downloading Libby, I’ve by no means been with out one thing to learn. There was Pachinko by Min Jin Lee after I flew to Korea to bury my mother, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong on her birthday, and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion after I ran a half-marathon to lift cash to battle the illness that killed her. There have been a half dozen trashy romance novels I’m too embarrassed to call and a few stinkers I returned early. Most lately, I’ve simply completed The Midnight Library by Matthew Haig and began In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is subsequent.

I’m conscious that there’s a darkish facet to Libby. The economics of ebooks squarely places libraries — the very establishments that gave me solace this previous 12 months — at a drawback. It’s an issue that even Congress has acknowledged. And but, it’s onerous to not love an app that didn’t cost me to entry the books I wanted after I wanted them.

Most importantly, I don’t have a e book drawback anymore.