'Read all about it" - online!

—  If you love reading, you don’t need to put up with shelves overflowing with books or overwhelm your coffee table with mountains of magazines. Here are just a few of many websites offering for free or nearly free more than enough reading material to indulge your inner bookworm.

Books –  Google has a searchable site for free books. There’s also Overdrive, an app for tablets and eReaders where you can check out best-selling eBooks and audiobooks from your local public library. Overdrive is free with a library card and can be accessed through participating library websites.

Catalogs – As the holidays draw near, it’s fun to look through vintage catalogs and reminisce about items from your childhood or those from your parents or grandparents’ day. Among the best websites for exploring is wishbookweb.com. There you’ll find wishbooks from famed toy seller FAO Schwarz, Spiegel, Lord and Taylor, and, of course, Sears. Musetechnical also has catalogs, including Sears and Montgomery Wards. You can’t order the merchandise, but you’ll flip over the low prices and enjoy the nostalgia of items maybe you remember asking Santa for.

Magazines  –  There’s no shortage of sites for finding vintage magazines of all kinds. Here’s a website that offers a comprehensive categorized collection of magazines for every conceivable interest. It’s part of Envision the Past, a habit-forming repository of stuff to read.

Newspapers  –  While there are many sites for viewing old newspapers, probably the most comprehensive collection can be found at the Library of Congress. Many resources are free, overall, while others come with a modest fee, including newspaperarchive.com.

Comics –  Comics Kingdom and Gocomics has about every comic strip you can think of — and then some. You can catch up on the latest popular comics, discover new comics, and also enjoy some classics like Little Orphan Annie or the Katzenjammer Kids.

Etc. – If you’re fascinated by communications technology, the mass media and entertainment world, worldradiohistory.com has an unbelievably exhaustive collection of publications that include magazines devoted to radio, television and electronics from the U.S. and all over the world. This website includes Billboard, Advertising Age and unique publications from around the world. If you’re fascinated by old Hollywood or other media history, then go to the media history project website for issues of Photoplay, Variety and more.

No mention of old publications online would be complete without mentioning archive.org and the vast, often eclectic offerings found within.

In closing, you might have discovered some websites of your own. Feel free to share them with me!

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