She gave me an old, beat-up quarter to pay a fine, and I couldn’t help but make fun of it.

“Is this really a quarter? I’m not sure because I can’t read any of the writing on it.”

“It won’t matter soon anyway because they say soon we’ll have the same money,” said our director who was standing nearby or something to that effect. I’m not sure if she was trying to be ironic or not, but the patron took it as her cue to add:

“And with Obama’s face on it. Don’t get me started.”

Don’t get me started.

That reminded of my last Patron of the Week: Mrs. My-Son-Believes-In-Extraterrestials-And-I-Like-To-Leave-People-Hanging-In-Suspense, who ended her story with:

“Of course, there’s more to THAT story but I need to get home.”

Again, here I had another patron leaving me in suspense.

“Oh, please, please start, I so want to hear what other right-wing conspiracies you have…,” I was thinking.

But alas, she didn’t.

So just as I asked with my last Patron of the Week post, I will ask the question of you, “What’s the rest of the story?” Or in other words, start!  Let me know in the comments again or write your own blog post — if you feel that inspired or are that hard-up for blog fodder.

Aside: The patron at the library who recommended the series to me said yesterday that she hasn’t even read any of them yet. They’re sitting on her shelves. A friend of hers recommended the series to her and then she to me, based on my mentioning that I enjoyed the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson. 

As I might have mentioned previously, I work at a library as a librarian assistant. Lately, we’ve been inundated with requests from patrons how to download ebooks from the library and as a result, we’re having a workshop this coming Monday to guide folks through the process. At our library, we use Overdrive, which has ebooks for Kindles, Nooks, iPads, iPhones and audiobooks too. In preparation for that, I’ve been doing a little research on my own of other places you can find ebooks for free (or almost free). I thought I’d share a little of what I’ve found.

I’ll start with where I am: in Pennsylvania, library cardholders from across the state can apply for a library card at the Free Library of Philadelphia and then check out ebooks on that card. At least, this is what I’ve heard and read in other places. So I thought I’d test it out for myself. I applied last night. I’ll let you know how it works out.

Through the Susquehanna County Library System website, I learned of a few other resources that I didn’t know were available for people not only in Pennsylvania, but across the country. For example, those with Kindles have a number of options to lend and borrow books, including Lendle.com and BookLending.com. Those with Nooks also have options to lend and borrow books such as ebookFling. My wife has a Kindle and I have a Nook, so I’ll let you know how these work out too, but feel free to try them for yourself. There is no cost to join any of them, although it does look like there might be a minimal cost to borrow ebooks on ebookFling.

One last resource for now that I’ll mention is Open Library, which has a lending library of books, mostly classics, available in ebook form. I plan to test-drive all of these in the near future.

So what resources for free or next-to-free ebooks have you found? Let us know in the comments.

I would have participated too in that discussion, but the disc that Netlfix sent me had a crack in it, so I was unable to do so. Appropriately to an audiobook challenge, I guess, I did “listen in” to the conversation and added a few tweets to the chat. It was interesting to hear the insight of Vance himself, who participates in the Twitter discussions, on the movies. Not only does he embody Bond in voice, but also he knows Bond in whatever format he can be found: books, audiobooks, movies. I wouldn’t have been surprised if we had asked him a question about songs used in Bond movies, he could have told us that too.

Looking back at the week on the blog:

• I added a few books to my TBR pile, thanks to a phone conversation with a friend.
• I paid tribute to Etta James, who died on Friday, and Martin Luther King, Jr. whose day we celebrated Monday with two posts: one semi-personal and one on music associated with him.
• I also reflected on how I’m doing with “that eating frogs thing.”

One last note before I go: after a few of you mentioned it last week, I joined FictFact to keep track of all the series I’m reading, have read or would like to read. So far, I have 77 series with 317 books read. If you’d like to connect there, my username is…and this might shock you…unfinishedperson.

So how did you do this past week with your reading? What are you planning to read today and/or later this week? As for later in the week, I plan on continuing with The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol. 2 during my lunch/dinner hours at work and starting either Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier or The Redbreast by  Jo Nesbø, the first in the Harry Hole series.