All aboard the Library Train: Subway stations offer free e-books

NEW YORK (FOX 5 NEWS) - Ride the subway, read a book. New Yorkers do that every day. But now the MTA and the city's public libraries are making the commute even wordier, so to speak, by offering free access to hundreds of e-books and e-book excerpts.

The six-week program called Subway Library is a partnership with the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Queens Public Library. Commuters waiting in underground subway stations can connect to free TransitWirelessWiFi on their mobile device and then click on the SubwayLibrary.com prompt.

NYPL librarian Gwen Glazer helped pick the hundreds of e-books and short stories now available.

"We realized that people on the subway often are looking for something to do and looking for something great to read," Glazer told Fox 5's Lidia Curanaj. "However long your commute is, however long you're on the train, we have something for you hopefully."

To promote the program, the MTA unveiled a Library Train that is wrapped to look like the New York Public Library's Rose Main Reading Room on 42nd Street. The Library Train will run on the E and F lines.

"The New York Public Library's mission is to make information and knowledge accessible to all, and this exciting partnership with the MTA is certainly right on track," NYPL President Tony Marx said in a statement. "By making thousands of free stories easily available to subway straphangers, we are encouraging reading, learning, and curiosity."

The available books and excerpts fall into several categories: New York Stories, New & Noteworthy, Select Shorts, Children, and Young Adult, the MTA said. These are some of the titles available: Soar by David Banks, At Balthazar by Reggie Nadelson, The Soul Is Not a Smithy by David Foster Wallace, The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis by Karen Russell, Bayou Magic by Jewell Parker Rhodes, and Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Lemony Snicket.