Oh the things I do for my readers. All 3 of you!
I am updating the database of books, trying to find missing book plots. I found that Agnete Holk’s The Straggler was missing its plot. No problem, just search.
Nope. No one has the book plot listed. So, in the interest of completeness and not my own purient interests, I headed off to Open Library. If you haven’t found Open Library yet, then you’re missing out.
Once you install Adobe Digital Editions software, you can download and read books, for free, from Open Library. And that includes books like The Straggler. Really. Someone in some library somewhere scanned it, and made it available to the public.
Awesome!
“The people there, the women that is, mainly regard themselves as couples. In order not to draw too much attention to us, may I be allowed to act as your – partner then?”
Irene laughed. “That will suit you wonderfully – especially if you can make remarks again like the one you made before, about ‘the tear-kissed yearnings of a girl’!”
Vita laughed herself. “I shall try to do my best to match the part.”
[edit…]
They walked side by side, Vita’s arm resting lightly on Irene’s wrist. “Almost a honeymoon couple,” whispered the romantic young girl to her partner.”
The books are usually well done – I have only found a few that were poorly scanned. The books are also text-searchable, which is fantastic when you need to find a key phrase.
When I am searching out a book on Open Library, I will often borrow the book, and then keyword search it online. I can then review each time that keyword comes up. Lesbian is usually a pretty good keyword for figuring out if it’s a book I want to include. I can then either download and read the book, or just return it. Hey, there are always a few duds out there.
If you check out the About page at Open Library, you’ll see their humble and fully attainable goal is have a web page for every book ever published. Dudes! I know what that’s like! I want to list every lesbian book ever published, but dang that’s hard! And with today’s technology, anyone can throw together any book and list it on Amazon for sale. Have I mentioned that I usually ignore those ones?
And now, off to read about the “two girls, one dressed as a cowboy, the other in lovely flimsy materials, danc[ing] a speciality.”
