Oyster Books

I love reading and I love books. I love the feel of a book and it's crisp pages so the whole e-reader thing has never had that much appeal for me. However I've been taking the train from NYC to Boston and back almost weekly the whole summer which means a lot of time to read and a need for a small, light travel bag as I'm the one hauling it.

giltcity.com  currently have a free 2 month trial of Oyster available. Oyster allows you to download as many books to your ipad or tablet (or nook or kindle) as you want and has a selection of 500,000 to choose from. It normally costs $9.95 a month with the first month free.

Pros of Oyster:
I loved the portability of it.
There was a good choice of books, including things such as picture books and cookery books.
Oyster sent you suggestions for books as you complete each one. This lead me to read things that I otherwise wouldn't have picked out for myself.
Oyster told you how far through each book and each chapter you were which I loved.
You can read multiple books at the same time and create a reading list.
The downloads were really fast.

Cons of Oyster:
I missed the feel of a real book.
The books available were a few years old (copyrights?) so I didn't get to read anything on my current reading list.

What did I read?
Driving The Saudis Jayne Amelia Larson
Waiter Rant Steve Dublancia
Roasting in Hell's Kitchen Gordon Ramsey
It Chooses You Miranda July
Sign Language Daily Telegraph
I Heart New York Lindsey Kelk
Prime Time Jane Wenham Jones
I Am Not Myself These Days Josh Kilmer-Purcell
The Bucolic Plague Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Overall:

I was happy to have tried out Oyster at no charge but I won't be subscribing. TBH at times I found it difficult to choose something that I really wanted to read and most of the books are ones that I wouldn't have chosen from my excellent, local public library. A lot of my favourite authors weren't featured, a lot of lesser known writers were. 

(I did thoroughly enjoy It Chooses You and the two Josh Kilmer-Purcell memoirs though).