Konrad wrote: > tyan at twcny.rr.com (Thomas Yan) writes: > > > Interlibrary loan is also something to consider. (But my > > experiences with it haven't been happy. A number of > > times, it came as microfiche --ok, I probably could have > > specified I wanted only dead-tree format-- and I didn't > > enjoy working the reader. Also, sometimes the loan > > period was rather short. Since I'm finicky about when I > > want to read a book, a short loan period + random arrival > > time = unhappy me.) > > Were you asking for periodicals or something? Nope, SF. I think I read two of Sheri S Tepper's Marianne books that way. I think one of the rolls also happened to have a book by Vonda McIntyre, whose books I was also trying to read, but I wasn't in the mood at the time, so it did me no good. >I've never > heard of anyone putting books on microfiche. Well, I guess books take up space, and libraries have limited space. Therefore, they must either cull books or convert them into a form that uses less space. > I've had really good experince with interlibrary loans, and > I'm usually given about three weeks to read them (longer in > some cases). Sure, you never know when it'll show up, but > that's a small price to get something you can't find > anywhere else. I don't expect to use it much again for fiction. I suspect I'll just about always have tons of other choices readily available as I wait for a used copy to become available or for it to come back into print. (I just read _Tea with the Black Dragon_.) I guess it's more of a problem for me than other people. If I were less picky about what to read next, my physical to-read pile would be much smaller. (Or, maybe given my willingness to systematically knock books off it, it would be even larger? Hm....) As it is, I look through and think, nah, I don't think I feel like reading that, or, I want to read a good book and that seems like it would fit the bill -- except that I'm feeling too tired to properly appreciate, etc. So I go reread some other book or go buy a book from my electronic or mental to-read list. I think Octavia Butler's _Survivor_ may have been the book with a one week period. Argh! (I now own a copy so that I can reread it whenever I want. In case you haven't heard, Butler retroactively hates that book and has vowed it will never be reprinted.) > And so far, ILL has always found what I ask > for, even Lindholm's _Wizard of the Pigeons_, Erikson's > _Gardens of the Moon_ (in the ultra-rare trade paper > edition), Lem's _A Perfect Vacuum_, the _Folktales of > Hungary_ mentioned in another thread, and Mirrlees' > _Lud-in-the-Mist_. I'd already given up on ILL when I wanted to read The Secret Country trilogy. Is David Goldfarb on this list? If so, he has a, um, interesting story to tell. > AND the library I work for does participate in ILL, and has > a copy of Athyra sitting on the shelf right now (well, a > couple of hours ago, but it's probably still there). Maybe I should give ILL another whirl: I suppose if I'm not in the mood when a book arrives, I can always return it and resubmit a request. (Maybe I should start doing that with my mail order DVD rental service, instead of hanging on to some DVDs for months....) > > If you want something to do in the meantime, you can try > > to spot more differences between the omnibuses and the > > original books. :) > > I bought the omnibuses for that very reason. Maybe a group > read will encourage me to do it. > > Of course, the Author could save us the trouble by posting > his change log. :) That reminds me. One thing I really, really, REALLY want out of e-books is the ability to annotate them *and* share annotations with others. Hm, maybe with some sort of version control so that many people could pool their efforts.... (I want a similar feature for movies, too, plus the ability to share, I guess they'd be called scripts, e.g. to allow viewers to pass their edits for what a "viewer's cut" of a movie.)