Try reading backwards
Google announced yesterday that it is now possible to download full PDF versions of out-of-print books via Google Book Search.
The Google blog entry links to a fun-looking book: 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century. It's a speculative look fifty years in the future, penned in 1881.
I noticed something interesting: you can flip back through unnumbered pages to see the dedication page for the particular volume scanned by Google. Flip back another page, and you can look at the cover.
I tried this with a few other books, and it worked on them too.
I like this ability to examine elements that are unique to a particular copy of a book. It makes the whole digitized book experience, well, a bit more "bookish."
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