I can get just about any book I want through the library: http://www.georgialibraries.org/public/pines.php
There's no catch. You order the book from whichever library has it, and they deliver it within a few days. Plus, the eBook loan program's collection gets bigger all the time. More states should adopt a system like this. The software behind PINES is free and open source: http://evergreen-ils.org/
last time i checked i could reserve on my local library probably a billion more books than what is available in the tiny kindle library. e.g. taocp
Re:Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited
by walterbell on Wednesday July 16, 2014 @10:24PM
(#8045697)
Yes, not to mention that some of the best books (e.g. by author R.A. Lafferty) are out of print and only available in libraries or for hundreds of dollars on the used market.
There's an entire corpus of literature between 1920 and 2014 that is out-of-print for licensing or estate reasons, rather than quality, much of which can be found in libraries.
I'm quite specific about what I want to read. My local library (that happens to be just round the corner) never has what I want. I often don't even seem to be able to order in what I want. So I gave up and just buy books on a Kindle instead.