I’ve been an owner of the Kindle Keyboard 3G for years now. There are so many things I love about the Kindle.

e-ink vs. an LED display

Perhaps most of all, I love the e-ink technology and how it reads like smooth type on real paper (and how you can read it under direct sunlight). Even though I have an iPad, I still prefer using my old Kindle as an e-Reader–it’s just a pain to read a glowing screen for too long, but with the Kindle I can read and read for hours without straining my eyes.

I also love how my Kindle has 3G wireless built-in, and there’s no monthly fees to pay for this access. Granted, the main purpose of the 3G is to connect to the Amazon store to buy more stuff (you can search Google or Wikipedia and surf the Web, but the built-in browser is a bit clunky, probably by design to discourage people from using the free bandwidth too much).

I really like the bells and whistles built in. How I can adjust the side of the text I’m reading. How a little indicator on the bottom tells me what percent of the book I’ve read. I love how I can add notes and annotations.

One thing I really love is how I can read a book on my Kindle, but pick up reading where I left off from my iPad, my iPhone, or my laptop by downloading the Kindle application to all three of them. There have been times when I’ve started a book on the Kindle, read a little bit on my laptop during downtime at work, read a little bit more on my phone on the train ride home, and then continued back at home on the Kindle.

But the one thing that always annoyed me (and made me envious of owners of the Barnes and Noble Nook) was that I couldn’t borrow books from the library. But that all changed recently. There’s a company called OverDrive, Inc. based out of Cleveland which is bringing e-Book technology to public libraries everywhere.

Here’s how it works with my own library, the New York Public Library. But chances are your local library has or is bringing in this technology as well.

1. I log into my library Web site.

3. I can browse or search for a book I like. They give suggestions based on what the newest and/or the most popular books are. Note that there are usually a few options: Kindle books, ePub books (for standard e-readers like the Nook and the Sony Reader), PDF eBooks, and/or audio books.  Once I see a book I like I can click on the title to see more details or click  ”Request Item” next to the Amazon Kindle version.

4. Each library has a limited number of e-books available for download. If a copy is not available, you’re asked to enter your name and email address and you’ll be placed on the waiting list. When it becomes available, you’ll receive an email telling you to return to the site to add it to your eList and check out.

5. Otherwise, if the book is available it’ll be added to my ”eList” (an eList is OverDrive’s equivalent of a “Shopping Cart”). At my library, I can add up to 12 books to my eList at a time. Here’s what a screen looks like when I have two Kindle books in my eList. After I’ve found all the books I want, I click “Proceed to Checkout” from the bottom.

6. After I enter my library card number and password, I can select a lending period of 7, 14, or 21 days. If I pass this period and haven’t finished the book yet, I’ll need to check it out again (and if there’s a waiting list, I’ll need to wait my turn again).

8. Clicking this button will take you to Amazon.com, where you can click a single button to electronically transfer the book to your Kindle (or, using the drop-down menu, to a Kindle app on your laptop, tablet, or cell phone). If your Kindle is connected to the Internet through WiFi or the built-in 3G, the download will happen instantly–the next time you pick up your Kindle the book will be there for you to start reading.

Voila, you’ll have a Library book on your Kindle.

While this is the experience for members of the New York Public Library, chances are your local library’s experience is similar if they’re using OverDrive technology.

One thing I love about e-Books is that unlike real library books, you don’t need to worry whether any of the fifty thousand people who borrowed it before you had the swine flu, took the book into the bathroom, or did any of the scores of other things we don’t like to think about people doing with library books. It’ll be like a brand new book in your Kindle.

I actually like the fact that there’s a 21-day limit on books, as it’s gotten me to read books faster, especially popular books where not finishing could mean another month on the waiting list. But happily, if you don’t finish in time, when you check it out again from the library your place and all your notes and annotations will still be there.

And surprisingly, the selection at my library was huge. There were books that are on the current New York Times bestseller list. Most of the more popular ones had a huge waiting list, but then again, there are plenty of available books to read while you’re waiting for the popular ones to get free.

Now the question–why am I writing all this on Charitable Gift Giving dot com? Well, other than wanting to share my excitement about being able to borrow library books on the Kindle, I really like how Overdrive has solved the dilemma of convincing booksellers AND libraries that letting people borrow books “for free” isn’t going to hurt business.

You’ve probably noticed in the screens above that once you’re sent to Amazon, you have the option to buy books so you can keep them permanently. So like in a real library, borrowing a library book is a great way to “try before you buy”.

What OverDrive does is, for every book you purchase on Amazon during your library borrowing experience (or another affiliated retailer such as Barnes and Noble, Books On Board, or Powell’s Books), your library will get a percentage of the sale which they can use for expanding the EBooks, audio books, music, or video to their “virtual branch”. So it’s a win-win-win-win scenario–Amazon makes money from the sale, your library gets funding to add to its eBook collection, you get the book in your hand at a great price, and OverDrive gets their cut for making it all happen. In this sense, it’s an improvement over traditional library books, where if you like a book you’ve borrowed your library will never see any percentage if you decide to buy it in a bookstore. At a time when libraries are getting their funding slashed by governments, it’s a quick and easy way to help support them (in addition to giving directly, of course).

We’ve had a couple posts lately of great charities that celebrate reading, along with Kindle books that give to charity. Reading is definitely becoming a lost art, but it’s still the single best way to broaden your mind and expand your creativity, much more than poring over Tweets and watching mindless reality shows. If one of your New Year’s resolutions has been to read more, take it from my personal experience–buying a Kindle will help you do just that.

If you’re in the market for a Kindle, here’s what I’d recommend. All of these models have e-Ink (i.e., clear reading in bright sunlight, no glare), have built-in WiFi to connect to your local hotspot, have fantastic battery life which can last weeks.

In all four cases I’ve linked to the model with “Special Offers”. What this means is, normally when the Kindle goes into screensaver mode it’ll show generic pictures of authors, book plates, designs, and so on. With “Special Offers”, the price of the unit is reduced, and in exchange you’ll see advertisements instead of the generic pictures. That’s the only difference–the ads only show up on screensaver mode and never in your reading experience. Because of that I definitely recommend the Special Offers version. In fact, sometimes there’ll be amazing offers from Amazon which I (as someone who doesn’t have special offers) will be jealous of

Basic Kindle - This is the entry level Kindle. It doesn’t have touchscreen, just a five-way controller, so navigating the on-screen keyboard can be a pain when searching for books or playing games. It does have buttons on the side for you to turn pages with. Long story short, if you just want a basic reader, it’s not a bad choice. It has 2 GB of storage, which will store upwards of 1,400 books. The form factor is the most compact of all the Kindles at 6.5″ by 4.5″ and only 0.34″ thick , and it weigh in at a hair under 6 ounces.

Kindle Touch- This is the next step up. It’s a hair larger than the Kindle at 6.8″ x 4.7″ and thicker at 0.40″. It has a touchscreen display which to be honest I find a little clunky (if you’re used to an iPhone or iPad, you’ll feel it’s sluggish). You also don’t have the option of turning pages with buttons, which I personally am not a fan of but which other reviewers have said they prefer. It has 4GB of memory which will hold 3,000 books.

Kindle Touch with 3G - This is the same as the Kindle Touch, but has 3G wireless built in. In other words, no matter where you are you’ll have an online connection straight to Amazon. If you have constant access to hotspots there’s really no need for it, but if you do a lot of travelling or your Kindle is not always within reach of a hotspot you’ll find it a wonderful thing. If I leave my Kindle at the office but check out a library book at home, the book will be ready for me as soon as I go back to work.

Kindle Keyboard 3G - This is the latest iteration of the original Kindle. It’s about an inch longer than the Kindle Touch at 7.5″ x 4.8″, but interestingly it’s also thinner at 0.34″. Personally, I love having the physical keyboard–navigating a virtual keyboard with the Kindle or even with the Touch just doesn’t give me the same satisfaction as a real keyboard. And I find I use the keyboard much more than I thought I would, for shopping the Amazon store, for searching the Web, and for writing notes. While Amazon probably wants to deprecate this model, I’m still a huge fan. It also has 4GB and can hold up to 3,500 books.

There are also other Kindle models; the Kindle DX which has a gargantuan 9.7″ screen and the Kindle Fire which is Amazon’s foray into the world of Android tablets. In all honesty, I wouldn’t recommend either of these. The DX is just too large and unwieldy for my tastes, and the Fire is just not as strong as other Tablets like the Apple iPad 2, the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, or even the NOOK Color.

Hopefully this post has encouraged you to rekindle (no pun intended) your love for good books. Happy reading!

Now that people are snatching up Amazon’s New Kindle, we keep hearing about the demise of the “real” book at the expense of e-books. Which makes me a bit sad. While I love my Kindle, there’s something to be said about the memories of going to the bookstore, getting a brand new crisp paperback book with its shiny cover, cracking it open and smelling the freshly printed pages, reading through page by page, and having the utter satisfaction of reading the last word on the last page and closing the book.

I still remember clearly when I was in Kindergarten, we took a “field trip” to the school library. I was in awe. Like Burgess Meredith in the Twilight Zone, I wanted to read every one of them. I remember grabbing a book, only to have it taken away from me and taught what a “library card” is. But soon after, I got my very own copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which I devoured just as voraciously as that caterpillar eating holes in the pages.

Out of Print Clothing is a great company that pays homage to some of the great cover art of classic literature. They have T-Shirts, books, journals, notecards, tote bags, and other gift ideas dedicated to remembering and preserving some of the iconic cover designs of the last century.

They’ve got great classics represented in their T-Shirts, including three of my favorite books growing up, Harry the Dirty Dog, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and Caps for Sale.

Grown-ups will appreciate beautiful cover art from books like A Clockwork Orange, Farenheit 451, Of Mice and Men, Atlas Shrugged, Moby Dick, 1984, and dozens of other classics.

Something else noteworthy (no pun intended) is this set of note cards featuring eight classic covers. This way, you can preserve the lost art of writing as well as reading!. This includes the iconic cover of The Great Gatsby designed by Francis Cugat (something I particularly appreciate given that my hometown for the last five years has been “West Egg”).

The store is a veritable online treasure trove of gifts for book lovers, including actual children’s books (with original cover art, of course), from the Wonderful Wizard of Oz to Charlotte’s Web to Harold and the Purple Crayon. These are hardcover reproductions of the originals, not the cheap mass-produced tiny paperback version you see all over the place today.

These gifts are a great reminder of how wonderful the gift of reading is. Not only this, for each product sold, one book is donated to a community in need through our partner Books For Africa or donations are given to literacy projects here in the United States. It’s a wonderful way.

Between Out of Print Clothing and the organization Gone Reading which I highlighted a few weeks ago, you can make this a very happy Christmas for book lovers in your life!

When talking with my sister at dinner a few weeks ago, the subject turned to reading. As kids, we were voracious readers. When the Scholastic Book Club newsletter came to us in our grade schools, we’d circle all the books we could, great books like Encyclopedia Brown, The Cricket in Times Square, The Phantom Tollbooth were our best friends growing up. She bought a whole set of beloved children’s books for our nieces, but sadly when she asked if they’d read the books, they told her that just didn’t have the time. Sadly, I’ve even heard stories that the Book Clubs themselves have devolved into a catalog of toys and junk for kids.

It seems like an epidemic. Kids don’t seem to read anymore. We live in a world where more than three paragraphs of text on a Web page are called too much. We’re too busy to write complete sentences, so we write things like “LOL”, “LMAO”, and “BFF”. That’s just sad. Because a great book can inspire you, can lift you up, and can broaden your world. If you look at the most successful people in the world, most of them can rattle off a list of their favorite books.

I recently got a nice email from Brad, the founder of Gone Reading International, LLC. His is an amazing organzation that fund new libraries and literacy projects around the developing world. It’s no coincidence that literacy rate is one of the statistics by which people judge whether a country is successful. There’s a cause-and-effect relationship there. It’s not that once people get rich, they can afford books. It’s quite the opposite. It’s when people fill themselves with knowledge and inspiration from authors of the past that they can build upon the things they read and achieve greater things themselves. That’s why tyrants as recent as the Nazis in the 1930s or the Communists in China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s destroyed books. Allowing the masses to have knowledge was just too dangerous to their grip on power.

What organizations like Gone Reading International do is the opposite. By partnering with organizations like READ Global and Ethipoia Reads, they don’t just give people in developing areas a handout. They equip them with one of the most powerful gifts of all: the gift of reading. And in doing this they can stop the cycle of despair and hopelessness and help change their world for the better.

GoneReading.Com has a large assortment of high quality gifts that you can send to the avid reader in your life (or to something who has a budding interest in reading which you’d like to encourage). Brad was kind enough to send me some products to review.

My favorite product is this apron that says “Jane Austen for President”. I really like this idea–surely the woman who brought together Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy could figure out how to solve the debt crisis and the conflict in the Middle East!

It’s funny, but recently on Brad’s blog he wrote a series called “A Dude Reads Jane Austen”. It’s been years since I picked up Pride and Prejudice, but reading his thoughts just made me want to pick it up again.

I also got a chance to look at some of GoneReading.com’s mugs:

There’s a Jane Austen for President mug and a cute mug showing GoneReading.com’s logo with an alien pointing a ray gun at you and saying “Take Me To Your Reader”. These mugs were actually really, really high quality…very sturdy and taller than your traditional mug.

There’s a whole range of gifts for book lovers at GoneReading.com, ranging from T-Shirts to Tote Bags to baby onesies to mugs and aprons. You’re sure to find something great for the book lover in your life.

I want to thank Brand for reaching out, and encourage you to support this fantastic organization!

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie has become one of the children’s book classics of our time. It’s a beautifully illustrated children’s book that recounts the amusing story of what happens when a little boy gives a mouse a cookie. It’s sort of like a modern-day “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly” that of course not nearly as off-putting as that song. A Mouse Cookie First Library (If You Give…) is a compilation of the original book and its sequel “If You Take a Mouse to School”.

The author, Laura Numeroff, is donating a portion of her royalties will be donated to First Book, a national nonprofit organization that promotes children’s literacy.

This gift is this beautiful glycerin soap cube from The Literary Site. It’s a soothing, aromatic, Vitamin-E enriched soap available in citrus scent, herbal scent, and cinnamon scent.

This is one of those great gifts that “give three times”–you can give one to your recipient; for every soap cube sold, The Literary Site will donate one book to a child; and the soap is produced by The Enterprising Kitchen, a group in Chicago that provides life-training skills to disadvantaged women who are working towards self-sufficiency. The soap is also produced under fair trade and eco-friendly principles.

Read All About It is a book that was released today, from first lady Laura Bush and daughter Jenna Bush. 

Most people know that Laura Bush is a former teacher in Dallas, Houston and Austin, and has always been passionate about reading. She was an Honorary Ambassador for the UN Literary Decade, and at the White House, she hosted the first Conference on Global Literacy in 2006, bringing many different countries together to promote literacy. She launched Washington DC’s first National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. in 2001. As much as a roller coaster ride her husband’s approval ratings have been, the First Lady’s ratings have consistently made her one of the most admired women in public service.

This picture book is a great book for kids from 4-8. It talks about a child who likes everything at school except for reading, but during story hour, amazing visitors start dropping in which causes him to change his tune.

A portion of proceeds to benefit Teach for America and The New Teacher Project.

Do you remember reading Harold and the Purple Crayon or Goodnight Moon? If so, this book is for you.

HarperCollins has assembled twelve of the best picture books ever written into one book, the HarperCollins Treasury of Picture Books Classics: A Child’s First Collection. Even though the book is a large volume, the original feel of the books is preserved nicely, and it’s a great book to sit down together with your kids to read.

It’s a great gift for kids aged 4 to 8, who’ll treasure owning a big book just like the ones Mom and Dad have. And they’ll read these stories with you over and over again.

The best thing about this book is that 100% of the royalties will go straight to an organization called First Book. Check them out at www.firstbook.org. They’re a not-for-profit organization whose goal is an amazing one–to give books to children in low-income families so they can read and own their own new books. Every year, they distribute books to hundreds of thousands of kids.