Strictly for casual readers. Review on Librarywala

We (my wife and I) had joined librarywala a few months ago. The service is good and the people respond well. But in 3-4 months, we have already exhausted all the books in their collection that we want to read. My list of books is currently languishing with an "in circulation" status on each entry. All I can do is login every day and hope for some book to have been returned.

To be specific, I am a fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy. This section is drastically under-represented in their collection. There are very few books from the good authors, and I have either finished them off, or waiting for the last few to become available. Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Herbert ... the list goes on, but they have nothing from these authors!

I won't put my word on it, but I think the situation is the same for other sections too. Search for "Khushwant Singh", and you get only six books! Most of the books in "new arrivals" are just kiddie stuff, or really really average airport novels.

Only plus point is that borrowing books from them is cheap. So if there are books that you are reluctant to buy but would like to try them some time, then it might help to join librarywala. I managed to try out a few books like this. That was a complete paisa-vasul experience.

The website sucks, btw ... the search is pathetic, and their designers havn't done simple things like making sure that whenever a book is mentioned on the site, it's name should be a link to more details. So if you see a book mentioned in your queue and forgot what it was, you have to search for it yourself!

Update:

1) I had called their customer support the day I wrote this review, and told them about the pending books in my queue. The lady had promised action within seven days. I received a call from them yesterday that some of the books in my list are ready and they would hold whichever I wanted. I received those books today and realised that they were freshly bought copies!

2) I had also sent an email to their Mumbai head about the complaints I have with their website, one of which was the lack of links in the queue. As Nileshd notes below, the links are fixed now, and I like to believe that they took a positive view towards my email!

I am totally impressed to say the least.