Mrs. Mecomber's Scrapbook

It’s winter for us in the United States– that means more inside activities. For us, it means more reading. I have a stack of books that I’ve ordered from the library, but there are several books that I desire to read that my library does not carry (I like history books, especially ancient civilizations and British history; these seems to be in short order at my library, which carries a ton of fiction stuff).

I considered getting one of those e-reader gadgets (like the Kindle or Sony e-Reader) but the price tag gave me sticker shock. But I found that one doesn’t really need one of those gadgets to read books, not really. There are a ton of e-books to be found online. And if you have a netbook, it’s as easy as starting up a browser or opening a pdf file. Here’s a quick list of e-books to be found online. All of these sites have free books and other forms of literature to read.

Google Books
By far, Google has the largest selection of books and magazines, new and old. I like their library because they have many books that have been out of print for decades , which are very useful to me for my research.

Project Gutenberg is a huge site, with thousands of books you can download or read online.

The Christian Classic Ethereal Library has many old books and documents online for reading.

American Rhetoric has a large database of speeches, documents, videos, and more.

The Classic Bookshelf The website is a little hokey (old), but they have a searchable database and some great classics online.

The Open Library is good.

The Online Books Page is run by the University of Pennsylvania and has a searchable database.

Diploma Guide.com has a listing of free books and textbooks you can read online, as well as a listing of universities in the U.S. (public and private) where you can search for more.

The Internet Archive Text Archive
This website has a large selection of older books.

The Cornell University Library has some very old journals from early America. And The Making of America has a selection of older books, too.

Children’s Storybooks Online has children’s books.

And this list just scratches the surface! If you still haven’t found a particular book, try searching for “read books online” and/or the title or genre of the literature you want.