Nook

This will not help you with updating the Nook, @Denise Happyfeet , but it is a suggestion for getting more free books. I don't know whether you already use Bookbub or not, but if you do not have that, there are lots of free and cheap books on there. Once you sign up, Bookbub sends you an email every day with new books that you are interested in. When you register, you fill out the information about the kinds of books you enjoy reading, and you can change the information as often as you want to do that. At first, I was getting WAY too many suggestions, and so I narrowed the list down to where I only get about 5-6 each day, and usually at least one of those is free. If you choose broader parameters, then you would have more options each day.
Also, if you just go to the Kindle store, put in what kind of book you want (Cozy mysteries, for example), and then sort by price, low to high, you will get all of the free books in that catagory first.
Every day, Amazon puts some different books on sale for free, so if you check back often, you will get new selections of free books.
These are not borrowed books, so you can have as many as you want and not have to worry about returning them.
Hopefully, this will help you to get more free books until you get a new tablet.

 

I do not know how it would work on Nooks; but when I get an e-book from Amazon, I can use the Kindle app and read the book on my ipad, iphone, or the Kindle. It also knows which page I left off with, and will go to the new page. For example, I am reading the book on my Kindle, which is where I usually read books from. Then, we go somewhere and have to sit and wait; so I decide to read it on my iphone, and the book will automatically open to the page I was last reading on the Kindle.
When I get back home again and go back to reading the book on the Kindle, it now starts at the page where I left off when I was reading on the iphone.
As long as I use the Kindle app, I can read any book that came from Amazon on any device that I want to use.
If the Nook is able to download the Kindle app, too, then you should be able to interchange between the Nook and the Kindle if you wanted to do that for some reason.

 

The word "app" is short for application, @Frank Sanoica . It is a program that you download onto your tablet or smartphone, and some computers also take apps. It would be similar to the old style way of using a CD to add a program that you wanted to run in the computer, except no CD is needed anymore.
There are apps for just about anything. I have one that tracks my steps and my sleep, one that counts carbs, and shopping apps from places like Walmart and Kroger. Architects can use blueprint apps. People that play games can download gaming apps, and so on.

What the topic is about on this thread is reading apps, like Kindle.
When you purchase an eBook from Amazon, then it will download onto the Kindle app and you use this app to read the book. You can download the app on any smartphone, tablet, computer or laptop,and then you can read your downloaded book from any of these devices that you want to use.
Even though I really like having a regular book to read, I have come to enjoy reading with my Kindle.
It is as small and lightweight as most paperback books, and it can hold hundreds (or maybe thousands ?) of books, so you can have your whole library on one tiny device.
New Kindles are under $50, and used ones can be much cheaper, and work fine, too.
There are so many free books on Amazon that it is easy to find books on just about everything that you want to study or read about.
Hopefully, this will help you with your understanding of what an app is and what they can have the potential to do for a person.

 

Some books can be loaned, and some cannot be loaned, @Denise Happyfeet . If you go to your Amazon account, go to the "manage my content and devices" section, and open that up. Then click on the title of the book that you want to loan out, and it will show a list of actions, one of which is to loan out the book (assuming this book can be loaned). When you choose that option, then I think that it opens a page to loan out the book. I have only done that once, and it was several years ago, so I don't really remember exactly how it worked.
The person you loan the book to has a specific amount of time for the loan, if I remember right, and when the book is loaned, you can't access it on your own Kindle. Since you have already read the book, this is not usually a problem. I think that you can only loan a book out one time, so once you do that, you can't ever loan it out again.
Here is what it should look like on your amazon account page.

 

That looks like about the same information as I remember reading in the Kindle one, Denise. You should also be able to download ALL of the Barnes and Noble books to your own Kindle, I would think. I know when I buy a book from Amazon, I can put it on my own devices, Kindle, iPad and iPhone, as well as on the Dell computer (assuming I wanted it on there).
Even though you have already read all of the books you purchased, you might buy one from the same author that refers to the other book, and want to re-read some part of it; so transferring the books is something that you might want to look into and consider.
Also, now that you have a Kindle, I think that you have access to the Kindle Lending Library. You might need Prime for that; but I think it works for anyone who has a Kindle.
With the lending library, you can borrow up to one book per month of books that qualify , and you can keep it as long as you want to keep it. Once you return it, you can borrow another book. More information should be in that Kindle Owners Manual that I told you about by Steve Weber.