Accidental Late Night Routine

I’ve been up late two nights in a row now. I suspect I’ll be up late again tonight. I’ve got a new guilty pleasure that ties in with both my writing and love of historical research. I thought the internet was cool before, but this, oh this is amazing.

Google Books.

I know, I know. It’s been around for awhile and I’ve dabbled with it before. But once I really started playing around with specific keywords—wowza! The out of print, hard to find, didn’t-know-these-existed books that popped up.

I write historical fantasy and I try to get the historical part as realistic as possible. Google Books can find information for me that I never would have found on my own. These books are not at my local libraries, nor is the information at other places on the internet—at least, not that I have found.

And sometimes the snipits are just that, little snipits to add to my research notes. I’m happy with the preview that displays that one factoid amidst a whole book that otherwise would be irrelevant. After all, I didn’t have to hunt down the book only to be disappointed.

Now, what about the copyright issues? For the most part, the books I am looking at are both out of print and in public domain. I can download them right to my computer for further study. And one of the newer books I stumbled across? Even though I could read a good chunk of it in the preview window, I ordered it anyway. It’s a collection of letters sent between sisters from the location and time period I’m researching. I can see the mail truck from my computer…I can hardly wait for the book to come in.