You have lots of options for finding and enjoying vintage fiction. You can borrow or buy; read, listen, or watch. I suggest you start close to home with your local library and local bookstore. If you’re lucky, you may find a kindred spirit who will remember your tastes and tip you off to books you might otherwise miss.
The list below is represents only a tiny fraction of your options on the Web.
Libraries let you read/listen/view for free.
Your own public library should be the first place you look for books reviewed here. Librarians can point you to sources of titles they can get for you from other libraries. Most libraries belong to some library system. Ask your local librarian how you can access that system from your home computer.
WorldCat [OCLC]
A library database you may want to check is WorldCat. With 1 billion items in its members’ holdings, WorldCat [OCLC] is the world’s largest network of library content and services. Whether you’re looking for popular books, music CDs, audiobooks, or videos—you can probably find them on WorldCat. You may also find article citations with links to their full text; authoritative research materials, such as documents and photos of local or historic significance; and digital versions of rare items that aren’t available to the public.
Booksellers Let You Own for a Price
AbeBooks.com
AbeBooks.com allows you to “search 13,500 booksellers selling 100 million books” new, used, rare, and out-of-print, all from one place.
Alibris.com
Alibris is another consolidated search site for 8,000 independent booksellers with 60 million used books for sale. You can also buy movies and music.
Amazon.com
Amazon has fairly extensive links to used book sellers. It also has charts that allow you to compare prices plus shipping charges of various book sellers.
Between the Covers
Between the Covers sells rare books online. It also has what it calls “the Web’s best illustrated guide list to literary awards and book lists.”
Biblio.com
At Biblio.com you can search 50 million used books, textbooks, rare, and out-of-print books for sale by booksellers around the world. The site also has reviews of older books and forums for book-related discussions. http://www.amazon.com http://www.bookfinder.com
Bookfinder.com
Bookfinder is another search engine site. Less fancy than some of the others, it says it has access to 125 million new , used, rare, and out-of-print books, including textbooks.http://www.dealoz.com
DealOz.com
DealOz searches online booksellers and comes back with sources and prices. The site also have a browsing section for fiction and literature where you can look for small sub-categories like British historical fiction or prehistoric era fiction.
If you’d rather watch
Amazon.com
The Web’s first big bookseller, Amazon, is a convenient place to buy VHS and DVD versions of film adaptations of vintage novels.
Movies.com
Movies.com carries DVDs of the latest movies as well as older ones.
Movies Unlimited
Moviesunlimited.com specializes in movies for movie collectors. It’s a good place to check for ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s film adaptations of novels.
Blockbuster rents movies through stores and online.
Netflix
Netflix rents movies on a subscription basis and sends them to you by the US Postal Service.
Intelliflix
Intelliflix is another online movie rental service that works on a subscription basis.
If you want to listen to books
Audibel.com
Audibel is a subscription site where you can download digital books to listen to on your digital player. Emphasis is on the current books.
Audiobooks.com
Audiobooks.com has new, used, CDs, MP3 downloads of books for your listening pleasure.
Downloadable e-books
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a consortium of organizations dedicated to preserving and sharing great books in electronic format.
Sites About Books
Fantastic Fiction
The emphasis at Fantastic Fiction is on recent fiction, but you’ll find bibliographies about authors and information on nearly a quarter million books — including picture of their covers.
You might also like…..
Find novels that you might like by finding topics or books you know you like at this page from the Statesboro (Georgia) Regional Library System Web site.
Midwest Book Review
The Midwest Book Review is a publisher of publications for community and academic library systems in California, Wisconsin, and the upper Midwest. It puts reviews of current books from those publications on its Web site. The site also has a long list of links to book sources.
Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels
Look here for Modern Library’s list biased but interesting picks of the top 100 novels. Almost all the choices are by English-speaking authors.
Top 1,000 top books
The top 1,000 titles—all genres, not just fiction—that OCLC member libraries bought for their own collections are listed on the OCLC Web site. The top three titles are the Bible, the US Census, and Mother Goose. OCLC also posts other lists of “top” titles like the top picture books and the 100 most influential books ever written.
